THE SIAMESE CAT
The ponies scampered along the New Road, clattered down a row of Chinese shops in Sam Peng, and out along the old city wall, where they shied at an elephant plodding to his bath. Scarlett neither marked their course nor knew that they were in Siam: he was with Laura Holborow again, hearing her speak, meeting the glance of those honest eyes where mirth lived and moved, like swiftness playing over depth. After an age of dumb sloth, he was restored to life, to speech, to joy.
"… Very interesting indeed," Aunt Julia was expounding, "especially to see and study Buddhism at home. With all their tolerant innovations, they seem to have kept the purer, primitive beliefs, such as—"
"Do look!" cried Laura, eagerly. Below the road stretched a canal, empty at ebb-tide; and in a sampan on the flat waste of filthy ooze, a little Siamese, trousered in a yellow panung, lay
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