Two women looked in at the door of a long dirty room. The yellow bright street glared behind them. A sad pig yearned towards some old bits of cabbage on which their high heels were set. One woman had orange-coloured shingled hair crimped over a low forehead, and bold old eyes. Her eyes were like her secret middle age looking out through the bars of her carefully erected prison of youthfulness. Her gay dress and light stockings were not quite clean. The other woman was stout. Though she was rigid she was more natural. She was not vivacious enough to be a deceiver.
"Oh my dear ... what's this?"
It was a long room divided along its length by a screen on which were pinned Chinese posters. The posters represented Bible subjects, but to the strange women this was not obvious. They did not know that the willowy creature in a long robe and a skull-cap with a little red button on the top was the prodigal son standing among his lithe pigs. The fact that the prodigal son and all the pigs were looking at a distant tiger threw the new-comers off the track. But of course to a Chinese artist a tiger is far more necessary to art than a knowledge of the rules of perspective. In the next poster the feast was thinly spread on a very steep table. The egg-browed father was formally calling the prodigal's attention to a little bowl of tea that clung to the slope.
Clifford Cotton, who had been working behind the decorated screen, appeared before the two women. One of his hands held a hammer and the other was smeared with blood. "It's a mission," he said. "Obviously." Everything that he saw or knew seemed obvious to him. "A panel of the harmonium is coming undone. I've been mending it for two hours but unfortunately it is still broken. And I have cracked my thumb. I'm a damn bad carpenter."
"Are you a damn good missionary?" asked one of the visitors, pinching her friend's arm to remind her that they were having a killing adventure.
Clifford sighed. "It's awfully difficult to keep your vocation young-don't you find? They've stopped me being a missionary so I'm only the mission printer now."
"Why, you're quite a character." Both women felt that, having admitted this, they were at liberty to release their bottled-up laughter without offence. One of them shrieked as she laughed.
"Perhaps you could give some money to the mission," suggested Clifford. "Not only the harmonium but the whole place is simply falling to pieces. Even a ten dollar note--"
"Not on your life," said the gay lady. "In fact, as the old song says-it's quite the other way. We're calling on all Britishers to ask them to take tickets for a show we're giving this evening. The Consul's lent us a room--"
"Is it a good show?" asked Clifford.
A dull voice from outside answered, "Not very."
The orange lady began to giggle irritably. Her forehead turned red. "If we depended on Lena for our advertising ..."
Clifford pushed rudely out between them and saw a third woman leaning limply against the outside wall of the mission. "This is Lena, is it?" he said. But she neither looked at him nor nodded. She was not interested in what people said. They were all enemies anyway.
"Lena is obviously wise," said Clifford, who was always seeking wisdom.
The gay lady said, "You certainly are a character. Now do come to our show. You won't be shocked, I promise you, though you are a missionary."
Clifford began speaking in an unnaturally polite voice. "Why my dear lady-of course. It's not likely that in a place like this my wife and I should wish to miss so rare an event...."
