The yellow muscles rippled
strongly over straining ribs, as with serious faces, and slant eyes
intent on their path, they chanted in pairs the ageless refrain, the
call and answer which make burdens lighter:--
"O heh!--O ha?
O ho ho!
O heh!--O ha?
O ho ho!"
From hidden places sounded the whir of a jade-cutter's wheel, a
cobbler's rattle, or the clanging music of a forge. Yet everywhere the
slow movements, the faded, tranquil colors,--dull blue garments, dusky
red tiles, deep bronze-green foliage overhanging a vista of subdued
white and gray,--consorted with the spindling shadows and low-streaming
vesper light. Keepers of humble shops lounged in the open air with their
gossips, smoking bright pipes of the Yunnan white copper, nodding and
blinking gravely. Above them, no less courteous and placid, little
doorway shrines besought the Earth-God to lead the Giver of Wealth
within. Sometimes, where a narrow lane gaped opposite a door, small
stone lions sat grinning upon pillars, to scare away the Secret Arrow of
misfortune. But these rarely: the village seemed a happy place, favored
of the Influences.
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