"He looks at me and shakes his head and says, 'No sabby,' and I looks at him and I shakes my head and says: 'Oh, yes, you do, Johnnie Sing. I wasn't wearing any whiskers when I used to meet you in Wall-Eye Bunsen's place. I've cultivated them for protective purposes only, to hide my face but not my intelligence--so you just overlook them and try and recollect Alec Corning. Now what d' y' say?'
"'Halloo, Captain Corning!' he says; and, no pretending, he was glad to see me.
"'Whitely,' I says--'Bill Whitely when you say it out loud. What's your trouble, Johnnie?' And so you c'n all get it right, I ought to say first that Johnnie Sing was a sort of Americanized Chinaman, who the last time I'd seen him was inquiring if he couldn't become a real American some way. He'd been born in Lima on the West Coast, where there's a big colony o' Chinamen, and he was part Chinese, the rest of him Peruvian Indian. A Christian, too, he was; which I'm not putting up as being for or against him, except so you'll see he had as much right to be a Christian as anything else. His mother was Christian, and so it wasn't like as if he had turned against his own to get on in the world.
"Johnnie was a good sort, and he'd made a few dollars in the tea business, and so maybe ought to 'a' been happy. But he wasn't. There was an old Chinaman, and not too old either, who'd married a Finn woman came off a wrecked Norwegian bark. They ran a laundry together, and by'n'by they came on to Frisco and ran a laundry there. And Johnnie followed them. A good woman, and she died leaving a well-grown little girl, and by'n'by the old fellow he figures he's made enough and goes back to have a look at China. But no sooner there than he learns he won't live very long, and he writes Johnnie of it, or maybe it was the girl did, her and Johnnie having been always about three-quarters in love with each other. And Johnnie he cruises over to China, and the old fellow, savvying how things are, says all right, marry, and they get married, and he gives 'em his blessing and lays down and dies. A good old scout, Johnnie said, and I guess he was.
"Well, everything's fine, only Johnnie wants to come back and live in the United States, and the girl too. She was sixteen years old when she left California, and a woman's life in the United States looked a lot better to her than in this land of one-half her ancestors. So she and Johnnie takes a steamer to Vancouver, and they get there all right; but not till they got there did either of them happen to think that they were foreigners and barred as Chinese from coming into the United States. Which was a pity, they being pretty white and so strong for everything American. Anyway, Johnnie writes to Trumbull, my old boss, to see what he could do, and after ten days or so Durks happens along and bumps into Johnnie and is surprised as you please to see him, and Johnnie tells him his story, and Durks tells him not to worry about that--that he'd smuggle him and his wife across in a schooner he'd just bought. They would take a little coast steamer and meet her a few hours up the coast, and then across the sound to Seattle--'twould be the easiest thing ever you see.