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For old Li was rich enough to retire by this time, no doubt, as compradores always find means to put away something year by year over and above their salaries. But he was scrupulously honest old Mr.
"All the things required by you, young ladies, must absolutely be subject to a fixed rule; for the different compradores have to lay in a stock of each every month; and to send them to us by the maids to take charge of; but purely and simply to keep in readiness for you to use.
The retail price of every sort of provisions is pasted up on the market-gate, once a week, by authority of the magistrates, in Chinese and English characters; so that the exorbitant rates charged by compradores may be easily detected and put a stop to.
But an unprejudiced glance about me now shows me that at least half of our young mistresses in the various quarters invariably purchase these things with ready money of their own; so I can't help suspecting that, if it isn't a question of the compradores shirking their duties, it must be that what they buy is all mere rubbish." T'an Ch'un and Li Wan laughed.
No such thing could ever be tolerated as that each of us should have to get money every day and try and hunt up some one to go and buy these articles for us! That's how it is that the compradores outside receive a lump sum, and that they send us, month by month, by the female servants the supplies allotted for the different rooms.
The Chinese laws are in force here; their Mandarins levy duties, and tax every article sold in its markets; its porters, boatmen, compradores, &c. require Chinese licenses, but not Portuguese: in short, the Chinese are lords of the manor, and the Portuguese are mere tenants, with leave to build forts, and to levy certain duties on the commerce of the place.
A very remarkable fact, however, is that several Japanese firms had employed Chinese as their compradores, a position entirely of trust, these being the officials whose duty it is to go round to collect money and cheques, and who are therefore often entrusted with very large sums of money. But now let us come to the foreigners stranded in the Corean kingdom.
"The purchases of the compradores may be what they are," P'ing Erh smiled; "but were anyone else to buy any better articles, the compradores themselves won't ever forgive them. Besides other things, they'll aver that they harbour evil designs, and that they wish to deprive them of their post.
"But as we're called upon to squander money right and left, and as the things purchased are half of them uselessly thrown away, wouldn't it, after all, be better for us to eliminate this monthly allowance to the compradores? This is the first thing. The next I'd like to ask you is this.
And while doing this he became aware that his bedroom had been invaded, and that polite brown and yellow men were beseeching him to vacate in favour of their market stuff. If the senor would have the goodness a thousand pardons for bringing to him molestation but soon would come the compradores for the day's provisions surely they had ten thousand regrets at disturbing him!
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