Bobby was not slow to proffer her congratulations.  She gave them with both hands, to say nothing of her eyes and her dimple.

“I pulled for you!” she whispered eagerly.  “I almost prayed for you.  I wouldn’t have seen you beaten for the world.”

As Percival, elated by her enthusiasm, stood shaking hands right and left, he felt a curious and unfamiliar warmth stealing over him.  All these people whom he had looked upon until to-day as so many figureheads stalking about suddenly became human beings.  He found, to his surprise, that he knew their names and they knew his.  He sat on a table, swinging his feet in unison with a lot of other young feet, while he sipped lemonade from the same glass as Bobby Boynton.

[Illustration:  He sat on a table swinging his feet in unison with a lot of other young feet, while he sipped lemonade from the same glass as Bobby Boynton.]

As a matter of fact, the Honorable Percival Hascombe was experiencing a novel sensation.  He was enjoying a sense of fellowship, to which all his life he had been a stranger.

XII

THE SONG OF THE SIREN

By the time the Saluria anchored off Shanghai, the fires in Percival’s bosom had assumed the proportions of a conflagration.  No sooner were they seemingly conquered by the cold stream of reason that was poured upon them than they broke forth again with fresh and alarming violence.

On the launch coming up the Hwang-pu River he took the precaution of engaging Bobby Boynton’s company not only for the day on shore, but for the evening as well.  With hardened effrontery he bore the young lady away in exactly the high-handed manner so bitterly condemned in Andy Black at Yokohama.

The day on shore was one he was destined never to forget.  The glamour of it suffused even material old China with a roseate hue.  With gracious condescension he visited gaily decked temples and many-storied pagodas, he loitered in silk and porcelain shops, and wound in and out of narrow, ill-smelling streets, even allowing Bobby to conduct him through that amazing quarter known as Pig Alley.  He not only submitted to all these diversions; he demanded more.  He seemed to have developed an ambition to leave no place of interest in or about Shanghai unvisited.

Tiffin-time found them at a well-known tea-house in Nanking Road—­a tea-house with golden dragons climbing over its walls and long wooden signs bearing cabalistic figures swinging in the wind like so many banners.  Percival secured a table on the upper balcony, where they could look down on the passing throng, and here in the intimate solitude of a foreign crowd they had their lunch.

Bobby was too excited to eat; she hung over the balcony, exclaiming at every new sight and sound, and appealing to Percival constantly for enlightenment.  Fortunately he had spent part of the previous day poring over a Shanghai guide-book, so he was able to meet her inquiries with the most amazing satisfaction.