United States or Libya ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Well," replied Burton, "it's really a sort of fairy tale unless Knox" glacing across in my direction "can confirm it. But there was a story current during the latter part of Adderley's stay in Singapore to the effect that he had made the acquaintance of the wife, or some member of the household, of an old gentleman out Johore Bahru way sort of mandarin or big pot among the Chinks."
"He was very reticent, but I made a number of inquiries, and finally learned with absolute certainty, I think, that he was the Mandarin Quong Mi Su from Johore Bahru, a person of great repute among the Chinese there, and rather a big man in China. He was known locally as the Mandarin Quong." "Did you learn anything respecting how he had come by his injury, Doctor?"
"Yes," said Jennings, "there was some scandal, I know, but it was after my time here." "Something about an old mandarin out Johore Bahru way, was it not?" asked Burton. "The last thing I heard about Adderley was that he had disappeared." "Nobody would have cared much if he had," declared Jennings. "I know of several who would have been jolly glad.
So the days were passed in the little kampong under the gently swaying cocoanuts, and the little Malayan girl grew up like her companions, free and wild, with little thought beyond the morrow. That some day she was to be married, she knew; for since her first birthday she had been engaged to Mamat, the son of her father's friend, the punghulo of Bander Bahru.
It was in vain, however, that I endeavoured to dismiss the matter from my mind; and throughout the evening, which I spent at a theatre with some American friends, I found myself constantly thinking of Adderley and the ivory casket, of the mandarin of Johore Bahru, and of the mystery of the shrivelled yellow hand.
Still their lives are not unhappy. Their husbands are kind and sober, and they are never destitute. They have their families about them, and hear laughter and merriment from one sunny year to another. Busuk's father-in-law is dead now, and the last time I visited Bander Bahru to shoot wild pig, Mamat was punghulo, collecting the taxes and administering the laws.
Toward night Busuk was put in a rattan chair and carried by the young men, while Mamat and the girls walked by her side, a mile away, where her husband's big cadjang-covered prau lay moored. It was to take them to his bungalow at Bander Bahru.
Word Of The Day