Me tell boss Mazaline ev'lytling me
see!" And he giggled almost as Orlando might have done.
After which Li Choo slip-slopped away to his work behind the kitchen.
When he saw Orlando's mother in the garden and the Young Doctor drive to
Askatoon, and Patsy Kernaghan mount an aged cayuse and ride off, he
clucked with his tongue and then went into the kitchen and prepared a
tray on which he placed several pieces of a fine old set of China, which
had belonged to Mazarine's grandmother and was greatly prized by the old
man. Then he clucked to the half-breed woman, and she made ready as
sumptuous a tea as ever entered the room of a convalescent.
Like a waiter at a seaside hotel, Li Choo carried the tray above his head
on three fingers to the staircase, and as he mounted to the landing,
called out, "Welly good tea me bling gen'l'man." This was his way of
warning Orlando Guise, and whoever might be with him, of his coming.
He need not have done so, for though Louise was in Orlando's room, she
was much nearer to the door than she was to Orlando. She hastened to
place a table near to Orlando, for the tray which Li Choo had brought,
and, as she did so, remarked with a shock at the cherished china upon the
tray.
"Li Choo! Li Choo!" she gasped, reprovingly, for it was as though the Ark
of the Covenant had been burgled. But Li Choo, clucking, slip-slopped out
of the room and down the stairs as happy as an Oriental soul could be.
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