"I had not thought of the life out here in that way," she said. "It had appeared quite fascinating to me."
"So it appears to nearly everybody at first. But after a while it palls upon them. At last it becomes unbearable."
"Then why do they not go home, or to Australia or America or somewhere else where they would be among their own people?"
"We are forgotten at home. We should be strangers there. And as for Australia or America, life out here unfits a man to succeed in lands where everybody must be his own servant and where there is no road to success but by hard work."
A little ray of comprehension shot into Miss MacAllister's mind. It was with a touch of impatience that she answered:
"But, Mr. Carteret, you do not mean to say that you have been long enough here to unfit you for work anywhere else. If you do not like the life, why do you stay here?"
"_Pro bono familiæ_," he replied with a bitter laugh. "Because of the affection of my beloved elder brother."
"The consul tells me that he enjoys himself here," she said, avoiding any discussion of his family affairs. "He says that there is very good shooting and some of the best sea-bathing he has ever experienced."
"He is welcome to the shooting, tramping over the hills and through the rice fields in a climate like this. As for the bathing, any pleasure in it is spoiled by the walk home in the heat afterwards."
At that instant the consul, who was playing, returned a ball with such a screw on it that after falling in his opponent's court it bounded back over the net. His opponent, in a mad effort to return it, plunged headlong into the net and fell. In celebration of which achievement the consul threw his racket high in the air, turned a handspring, and ended up by reversing himself and walking across the court on his hands, with his feet in the air.
"Splendid, Mr. Beauchamp!" cried Miss MacAllister. "Brilliantly done! Especially the gymnastic performance!"
"Right-oh, Miss MacAllister!" exclaimed a deep voice behind her. "The consul is acrobat enough to make a shining success as a sailor man."
It was Captain Whiteley, come up to drink a cup of tea and say good-bye before casting off for Hong-Kong.
"Oh, Captain Whiteley, I'm so glad to see you before you go! But what is this I hear? You have let your doctor go off to Keelung to carve Chinese, and perhaps be carved himself. I am surprised at you."