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The elder had a good figure, rather full for her age, and totally different from her own square solidity. Her hair was coarse and carelessly arranged, her clothes noticeable for a love of brightness rather than care in the spending of a small sum. Gerrit Ammidon had the strangest tastes! He was standing immobile, looking across the Cove as if he were on a quarter-deck searching for a hidden land.
It seemed to the latter that they were almost immediately at the door of North Church. The leisurely congregation filling the walk stiffened in incredulous amazement as Gerrit handed his wife to the pavement. Rhoda went promptly forward, nodding in response to countless stupefied greetings; while Gerrit Ammidon moved on at Taou Yuen's side.
Laurel again grasped the large hand and they turned to leave. Jeremy Ammidon nodded to Nettie. Nothing remained for her but the place on Hardy Street; then she saw that the others had stopped and were signaling for her. "Captain Dunsack... old friend," the elder said abruptly. "Stubborn as the devil. No worse than me, though, no worse than me. Confounded proud, too.
She didn't analyze it further; but drifted with the vigorous chattering tide of the Ammidons. They arrived at the impressive entrance open on a high dim interior. Jeremy and William Ammidon went in, Rhoda lingered while a chair was brought for her, and Sidsall and Camilla, Laurel and Janet ranged themselves facing the Square. Gerrit hung silent in the doorway.
"You must be responsible for your brother," Roger Brevard told the quivering woman. "I'll be back immediately. Now that you know Nettie's safe you must control yourself. No one should go up keep everybody out till you hear from me or the doctor or Captain Ammidon."
The other responded with a hard little laugh. "Thank you, though. You are more like Gerrit, Captain Ammidon, than Mrs. Saltonstone, his own sister. I hate her," she declared. "I hate all the Salem women, so superior and condescending and Christian. They always have a silly look of wonder at their charity in speaking to me... when they do.
"It poisoned me little by little, with the smell of its rivers and the cursed smell of its pleasures. Then the opium. A year after I had lost my position, everything; and when I came over here it followed me ... in my own blood. Even then I might have broken away, I almost had, when Gerrit Ammidon brought you to Salem. You came at a time when I was fighting hardest to throw it all off.
He repeated discontentedly that everything on sea and land had fallen into a decline. Others followed with a number of Korean boxes, strapped and locked with copper, and wicker baskets. A man in charge said to Gerrit Ammidon: "The chest was left for Mr. Dunsack at the foot of Hardy Street, sir, as you ordered. The inspector sent it off complimentary with your personal things."
At the same time he was the subject of some interest: he was an American who had lived in China, and not only on the fringe of the treaty ports he had penetrated to some extent into the spirit, the life, of things Chinese; while she, Taou Yuen, was amazingly married to Gerrit Ammidon, was a Manchu here, in America.
Gerrit studied him thoughtfully: he didn't know just how much William had yet told their father about the sweeping changes taking place in Ammidon, Ammidon and Saltonstone. He did see, however, that it was unwise to excite the old gentleman unduly. "I was saying only yesterday," he put in pacifically, "that you and myself are getting to be old models " he broke off as William entered the library.
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