"Then why do you let Ching
Po intrude upon her in her own house?"
"Ching Po?" He quivered all over as if about to spring up from his
chair, but he did not actually rise. It was just a supple, snake-like
play of his body--most unpleasant.
"I saw him there an hour ago--when I fetched my eggs. My cook's off, you
see."
Still that play of muscles underneath the skin, for a moment or two.
Then he relaxed, and his eyes grew dull. Follet was not, I fancy, what
the insurance men call a good risk.
"She can take care of herself, I expect," he said. They all seemed surer
of that than gentlemen in love are wont to be.
"She and Ching Po don't hit it off very well, I've noticed."
"No, they don't." He admitted it easily, as if he knew all about it.
"I wonder why." I had meant to keep my hands off the whole thing, but I
could not escape the tension in the Naapu air. Those gods of wood and
stone were not without power--of infection, at the least.
"Better not ask." He bit off the words and reached for a cigarette.
"Does any one know?"
"An old inhabitant can guess. But why she should be afraid of him--even
the old inhabitant doesn't know. There's Dubois; but you might as well
shriek at a corpse as ask Dubois anything."
"You don't think that I'd better go over and make sure that Ching Po
isn't annoying her?"
Follet's lips drew back over his teeth in his peculiar smile.
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