There are six of them now.
When one of them died of cholera at the beginning of the epidemic two others came up from Canton."
Kitty shivered a little.
"Are you cold?"
"No, it was only someone walking over my grave."
"When they leave France they leave it for ever.
They're not like the Protestant missionaries who have a year's leave every now and then.
I always think that must be the hardest thing of all.
We English have no very strong attachment to the soil, we can make ourselves at home in any part of the world, but the French, I think, have an attachment to their country which is almost a physical bond.
They're never really at ease when they're out of it.
It always seems to me very moving that these women should make just that sacrifice.
I suppose if I were a Catholic it would seem very natural to me."
Kitty looked at him coolly.
She could not quite understand the emotion with which the little man spoke and she asked herself whether it was a pose. He had drunk a good deal of whisky and perhaps he was not quite sober.
"Come and see for yourself," he said, with his bantering smile, quickly reading her thought.
"It's not nearly so risky as eating a tomato."
"If you're not frightened there's no reason why I should be."
"I think it'll amuse you.
It's like a little bit of France."
XL
THEY crossed the river in a sampan.* A chair was waiting for Kitty at the landing-stage and she was carried up the hill to the water-gate.
It was through this that the coolies came to fetch water from the river and they hurried to and fro with huge buckets hanging from the yoke on their shoulder, splashing the causeway so that it was as wet as though it had heavily rained.
Kitty's bearers gave short, sharp cries to urge them to make way.
"Of course all business is at a standstill," said Waddington, walking by her side. "Under normal circumstances you have to fight your way through the coolies carrying loads up and down to the junks."
The street was narrow and winding so that Kitty lost all sense of the direction in which she was going.
Many of the shops were closed.
She had grown used on the journey up to the untidiness of a Chinese street, but here was the litter of weeks, garbage and refuse; and the stench was so horrible that she had to put her handkerchief to her face.
Passing through Chinese cities she had been incommoded by the staring of the crowd, but now she noticed that no more than an indifferent glance was thrown at her.
The passers-by, scattered rather than as usual thronging, seemed intent on their own affairs. They were cowed and listless.
Now and then as they went by a house they heard the beating of gongs and the shrill, sustained lament of unknown instruments.
Behind those closed doors one was lying dead.
"Here we are," said Waddington at last.
The chair was set down at a small doorway, surmounted by a cross, in a long white wall, and Kitty stepped out.
He rang the bell.
"You mustn't expect anything very grand, you know.
They're miserably poor."
The door was opened by a Chinese girl, and after a word or two from Waddington she led them into a little room on the side of the corridor.
It contained a large table covered with a chequered oilcloth and round the walls was a set of stiff chairs.
At one end of the room was a statue, in plaster, of the Blessed Virgin.
In a moment a nun came in, short and plump, with a homely face, red cheeks and merry eyes.
Waddington, introducing Kitty to her, called her Soeur St Joseph.
"C'est la dame du docteur?" she asked, beaming, and then added that the Mother Superior would join them directly.
Sister St Joseph could speak no English and Kitty's French was halting; but Waddington, fluent, voluble, and inaccurate, maintained a stream of facetious comment which convulsed the good-humoured nun.
Her cheerful, easy laughter not a little astonished Kitty. She had an idea that the religious were always grave and this sweet and childlike merriment touched her.
XLI
THE door opened, to Kitty's fancy not quite naturally but as though it swung back of itself on its hinges, and the Mother Superior entered the little room.
She stood for an instant on the threshold and a grave smile hovered upon her lips as she looked at the laughing Sister and Waddington's puckered, clownish face.
Then she came forward and held out her hand to Kitty.
"Mrs. Fane?"
She spoke in English with a good deal of accent, but with a correct pronunciation, and she gave the shadow of a bow. "It is a great pleasure to me to make the acquaintance of the wife of our good and brave doctor."