" She made up the envelope to match and addressed it, with
consistent illiteracy, to the head of the mission. The son of the
Chinese basketmaker, who dwelt almost next door, spoke neither English
nor Hindustani, but showed an easy comprehension of her promise of
backsheesh when he should return with an answer. She had a joyful
anticipation, while she waited, of the terms in which she should tell
Arnold how she passed, disguised as a Chinese shoemaker, before the
receptive and courteous consciousness of his spiritual senior; of how
she penetrated, in the suggestion of a pig-tail and an unpaid bill,
within the last portals that might be expected to receive her in the
form under which, for example, certain black and yellow posters were
presenting her to the Calcutta public at that moment. She saw his
scruples go swiftly down before her laughter and the argument of her
tender anxiety, which she was quite prepared to learn foolish and
unnecessary. There was even an adventurous instant in which she leaped
at actual personation, and she looked in rapture at the vivid risk of
the thing before she abandoned it as involving too much. She sent no
receipt-form this time--that was not the practice of the bazaar--and
when, hours after, her messenger returned with weariness, and dejection
written upon him in the characters of a perfunctory Chinese smile, she
could only gather from his negative head and hands that no answer had
been given him, and that her expedient had failed.
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