Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/191

time he's a-prayin', you can bet your wig that he pretends to string them prayers out to some length. And I can tell you those Chinese parsons were up to one or two smart wrinkles. I'll tell you about a certain Ling Fu Quong. Well, if I hadn't rung the curtain down, as the stage players say, upon that gent's little comedy, I believes he'd be drawin' in a salary now for a fellow what died some forty years ago. You see it happened like this: I had had business deals on with a smug-faced Chinese merchant wot did business at Shanghai. Well, when I was about to sail for the old country, old smug face came to say how sorry he was I was a-goin' to leave, and hoped he'd have the pleasure of doin' business with me again when I come back. Well, we started talkin' and I told him that I should very much like to see a Chinese funeral, and old smug face said that he would gladly oblige me, because a very particular old uncle of his had died and his funeral was shortly to take place. Well, the upshot of it all was that I was invited to go up the river on smug face's boat to Soochow, where he lived and where his uncle had died, a city some sixty miles away or thereabouts. So there I accordingly went. Have you ever been on one o' them large sampans, Captain? No? Well, it's a long sort o' boat, fitted up very snug indeed, with flowers all trailin' over the side, and all fixed up to look like an old homestead sailin' on the river. After a very pleasant trip—and, Lord love you, I did make that old