'Bothering again. Letting trouble come along and trouble you before it's time to trouble?' laughed Dick. 'Here, David, I give you fair warning. This is my second go. If you're not pretty slippy the dish'll be empty. You'll be hungry when you go to your bed.'
'What! sit up! Watch in the house of the governor of Hatsu? David, you're a bit mad I'm beginning to think,' cried Dick, still eating heartily and quizzing his comrade. 'But, seriously,' he went on, 'where's the need? The jolly old fellow didn't wear the most handsome of faces, as I've admitted; but then he's our host. Twang Chun--beg his pardon, his Excellency--seems to be the kind of boy it would be bad practice to fall foul of. Supposing this governor fellow, what's his name?----'
'Don't mind what sort o' governor he is any way,' laughed Dick, who was feeling wonderfully jolly and facetious. 'Let's call him Hi for short. This Hi, we'll suppose, hates foreign devils like poison; but there's always Twang Chun, ain't there? There's always this jolly old boy Twang, who, we're told, is ready to wring the neck of any fellow who doesn't offer us hospitality. _Bien!_ as Alphonse says. There we are, safe as houses.'
'Just so,' agreed David, curtly. 'All the same, I shall watch to-night. I've got a kind of feeling that something may happen.'
'Indigestion!' cried Dick. 'Better let me dose you, my boy. One of those pills of the Professor's'll make you feel as right as a hay-stack--A1, in fact. A good sleep'll put you right by morning.'
But though David enjoyed his friend's chaff, and indeed laughed heartily at his last suggestion, he shook his head when invited to turn in. Why, he could not explain. But the fact remained, indigestion or no indigestion, the lad was filled with a sense of insecurity. Perhaps it was the roughness of the Tartar under-officer, perhaps it was the sounds of brawling which had come lately to his ear--who knows? It may have been a genuine premonition. He saw Dick plump himself on the narrow _kang_ in his room, and bade him good-night. Then he lay down on his own, his eyes wide open and staring.
'Suppose it must be indigestion,' he said after a while, 'or is it the face of this Tsu-Hi? I didn't like him. I swear I caught him scowling and muttering.'