"You got ticket?" he demanded sternly of the deliveryman outside. "You no
got ticket, you no get in!"

Which, Nan rather hysterically gathered, was what Wing Sam had gained of
the calling-card idea. After that, temporarily as she thought, Nan
permitted him to go back to his own method, which, had she known it, was
the method of every Chinese servant in California. The visitor found his
bell answered by a blandly smiling Wing Sam, who cheerfully remarked:
"Hullo!" It was friendly, and it didn't matter; but at that stage of her
development Nan was more or less scandalized.

Nan's sense of humour always came to her assistance by evening, and she had
many amusing anecdotes to tell Keith, over which both of them laughed
merrily. Gringo added somewhat to the complications in life. He was a fat,
roly-poly, soft-boned, ingratiating puppy, with a tail that waved
energetically but uncontrolledly. Gringo at times was very naughty, and
very much in the way. But when exasperation turned to vengeance he had a
way of keeling over on his back, spreading his hind legs apart in a manner
to expose his stomach freely to brutal assault, and casting one calm china-
blue eye upward.

"Can there anywhere exist any one so hard-hearted as to injure a poor,
absolutely defenceless dog?" he inquired, with full confidence in the
answer.

The iniquities of Gringo and the eccentricities of Wing Sam Nan detailed at
length, and also her experiences with the natives. She as yet looked on
every one as natives. Only later could she expand to the point of including
them in her cosmos of people. Nan was transplanted, and her roots had not
yet struck down into the soil. In her shopping peregrinations she was