Little Audrey dropped i yesterday dressed in Chinese cloth and not too good at that.
"Got a cigarette, Ip?" she asked.
"Certainly. But' what's the idea?
the Chinese habiliments?"
'I'm helping the Chinese in this show,"
"Whatever do you mean. If you'd had a grain of sense you would have evacuated to Hongkong weeks ago."
"Yes, and- have been: vaccinated, inoculated and segregated. Believe me, big boy, when I want to be shot, no Hongkong squirt is going to do it with a hypodermic, when there are nice big güns about to do it properly,"
"Well, what have you been doing?"
"fin a Chinese irregular. Didn't you see me last. Friday, I was yulohing my sampan down the river, near the Idzumo. Say, did those lads get a scare?
"What were you doing there'
"Well, you see, I was a bit sore ever my failure to torpedo Izzy a few weeks ago, and I was sort of looking things over again, when they opened fire on me."
"But weren't you afraid?"
"Yes, terribly. The way they were carrying on might have made me late for lunch."
"But I mean all that machinegunning, and the bombardment—"
"The bombardment was not so good. I got pieces of shrapnel in my hair, which took the amah quite a time to get out afterwards. But the shooting didn't worry me."
"Why didn't it?"
The only way they'll ever hit a target with a machine gun is to fix bayonets and charge." And Little Audrey left the room smiling gently.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.