“How long have you had them?”
“Oh, years, I forget exactly. I sent them back once for a while to see their people when I came over here with my wife. She wanted to live in hotels, and they were not happy.”
“They seem to be such an astonishing combination.”
“Yes, aren’t they? They beat us Anglo-Saxons hollow at that. You see how they run the house. They do menial labour as if it were a sacrament. They spiritualize it. It never spoils their manners and habits. There is not a trace of vulgarity about them. I never think of them as servants. They are presences to me, and when I want them to be company they are. They never make a noise. I rarely go into the kitchen, but when I do it is never in a mess. They never get irritated. They never seem to be tired. They understand me in some extraordinary way. They know how to take care of me when I am ill. They pay no attention to my irritation, my restlessness, my nerves. They are adaptable. I think they are happy here. I’ve tutored them in English and in French and in our money system. I’ve taught them to play chess, and most of the time they can beat me at it. How they find time to have the vegetable garden they do I don’t know, but a Chink of any kind can make things grow by looking at them, I think. But the thing that interests me most is their ungetatableness, if I may make so clumsy a word, their subtlety. I never know what these boys are thinking about, and sometimes I would give my soul to know.”
“Well, that’s the Eastern problem, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“That you can’t trust them?”
“My dear, you can trust a cultured Chinaman as you can an Englishman.”
