At every turn their eyes were greeted with something new and strange. Here a wandering barber squatted in the street and carried on his trade as calmly as though in a shop of his own. Tinkers mended pans, soothsayers told fortunes, jugglers and acrobats held forth to delighted crowds, snake charmers put their slimy pets through a bewildering variety of exhibitions. Groups of idlers played fan-tan and other games of chance, and through the waving curtains of queerly painted booths came at times the acrid fumes of opium. Mingled with these were the odors of cooking, some repellant and some appetizing, which latter reminded the boys that it was getting toward noon and their healthy appetites began to assert themselves. They looked at each other.
"Well," said Ralph, "how about the eats?"
"I move that we have some," answered Tom.
"Carried unanimously," added Bert, "but where?"
"Perhaps we would better get back to the English quarter," suggested Ralph. "There are some restaurants there as good as you can find in New York or London."
"Not for mine," said Tom. "We can do that at any time, but it isn't often we'll have a chance to eat in a regular Chinese restaurant. Let's take our courage in our hands and go into the next one here we come to. It's all in a lifetime. Come along."
"Tom's right," said Dick. "Let's shut our eyes and wade in. It won't kill us, and we'll have one more experience to look back upon. So 'lead on, MacDuff.'"
Accordingly they all piled into the next queer little eating-house they came to, but not before they had agreed among themselves that they would take the whole course from "soup to nuts," no matter what their stomachs or their noses warned them against. A suave, smiling Chinaman seated them with many profound bows at a quaint table, on which were the most delicate of plates and the most tiny and fragile of cups. They had of course to depend on signs, but they made him understand that they wanted a full course dinner, and that they left the choice of the food to him. They had no cause to regret this, for, despite their misgivings, the dinner was surprisingly good. The shark-fin soup was declared by Ralph to be equal to terrapin. They fought a little shy of indulging heartily in the meat, especially after Bert had mischievously given a tiny squeak that made Tom turn a trifle pale; but in the main they stuck manfully to their pledge, and, to show that they were no "pikers" but "game sports," tasted at least something of each ingredient set before them. And when they came to the dessert, they gave full rein to their appetites, for it was delicious. Candied fruits and raisins and nuts were topped off with little cups of the finest tea that the boys had ever tasted. They paid their bill and left the place with a much greater respect for Chinese cookery than they had ever expected to entertain.