Was it, indeed, ten
years,--ten,--nay, fifteen years, that he had lived this China-life?
The door swung softly open, and a servant brought a note, and stood
waiting for him to read it.
Swan glanced disdainfully at the object, which he could never quite
consider human,--at his white and blue petticoats, and his effeminate
face, so sleepy and so mindless, as if he expected him to turn into a
plate or sugar-bowl, or begin flying in the air across some porcelain
river, and alighting on the pinnacle of a pagoda.
"Hong man, he outside," said the servant.
"Show him in, you stupid fool!" said the master, "and get out of the
room with yourself!"
CHAPTER V.
The Hong merchant's intelligence proved at once to Swan Day the absolute
necessity of his return to America to protect the interests of the
Company in Boston. With the promptitude which had thus far been one of
the chief elements of his success, he lost not a moment in (so to speak)
changing his skin, for the new purpose of his existence.
It seemed as if with the resumption of the dress of his native
country, (albeit of torrid texture still, since a chocolate silk coat,
embroidered waistcoat, and trousers of dark satin speak to a modern ear
of fashions as remote as China,) Swan resumed many of the habits and
feelings therewith connected. With the flowing flowered robe he cast off
forever the world to which it belonged, and his pulse beat rapidly and
joyfully as the sails filled with the breeze that bore him away.
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