Chapter 3 - Page 2

merchant ships (which is a straightforward occupation) to buying
and selling merchandise, of which the essence is to get the better of
somebody in a bargain--an undignified trial of wits at best. His father
had been Colonel Whalley (retired) of the H. E. I. Company's service,
with very slender means besides his pension, but with distinguished
connections. He could remember as a boy how frequently waiters at the
inns, country tradesmen and small people of that sort, used to "My lord"
the old warrior on the strength of his appearance.

Captain Whalley himself (he would have entered the Navy if his father
had not died before he was fourteen) had something of a grand air which
would have suited an old and glorious admiral; but he became lost like
a straw in the eddy of a brook amongst the swarm of brown and yellow
humanity filling a thoroughfare, that by contrast with the vast and
empty avenue he had left seemed as narrow as a lane and absolutely
riotous with life. The walls of the houses were blue; the shops of the
Chinamen yawned like cavernous lairs; heaps of nondescript merchandise
overflowed the gloom of the long range of arcades, and the fiery
serenity of sunset took the middle of the street from end to end with a
glow like the reflection of a fire. It fell on the bright colors and the
dark faces of the bare-footed crowd, on the pallid yellow backs of the
half-naked jostling coolies, on the accouterments of a tall Sikh trooper
with a parted beard and fierce mustaches on sentry before the gate of
the police compound. Looming very big above the heads in a red haze of
dust, the tightly packed car of the cable tramway navigated cautiously
up the human stream, with the incessant blare of its horn, in the manner
of a steamer groping in a fog.

Captain Whalley emerged like a diver on the other side, and in the
desert shade between the walls of closed warehouses removed his hat to
cool his brow. A certain disrepute attached to the calling of a
landlady of a boarding-house. These women were said to be rapacious,
unscrupulous, untruthful; and though he contemned no class of his
fellow-creatures--God forbid!--these were suspicions to which it was
unseemly that a Whalley should lay herself open. He had not expostulated
with her, however. He was confident she shared his feelings; he was
sorry for her; he trusted her judgment; he considered it a merciful
dispensation that he could help her once more,--but in his aristocratic
heart of hearts he would have found it more easy to reconcile himself to
the idea of her turning seamstress. Vaguely he remembered reading years
ago a touching piece called the "Song of the Shirt." It was all very
well making songs about poor women. The granddaughter of Colonel