What with her
squint and her smile, she made a spectacle of herself before she panted
out her staccato statement. Doctor Mauer was away with a patient on the
other side of the island; and French Eva had been wringing her hands
unintelligibly on the Mauers' porch. She--Madame Mauer--couldn't make out
what the girl wanted.
Now, this was nothing to break in on me for; and Madame Mauer, in spite
of her squint and her smile, was both sensible and good--broke,
moreover, to the ridiculous coincidences and unfathomable dramas of
Naapu. Why hadn't she treated the girl for hysterics? But I gathered
presently that there was one element in it that she couldn't bear. That
element, it appeared, was Ching Po, perfectly motionless in the public
road--no trespasser, therefore--watching. She had got Eva into the house
to have her hysterics out in a darkened room. But Ching Po never
stirred. Madame Mauer thought he never would stir. She couldn't order him
off the public thoroughfare, and there was no traffic for him to block.
He was irreproachable and intolerable. After half an hour of it, she had
run out across her back garden to ask my help. He must go away or she,
too, would have hysterics. And Madame Mauer covered the squint with a
black-edged handkerchief. If he would walk about, or whistle, or mop his
yellow face, she wouldn't mind.
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