Jeeves of Cathay

A Trader's Tale

As Told To “Tukapa Koko”

UNTIL I went to Papeete for The Firm, I never knew there were so many Chinese outside of Pekin as that charming Society Island city can show.

There are several varieties of them — even fifty-seven, perhaps, for all I know to the contrary!—Chinese and Tonkin ese. Annamites and Javanese, beside Tahiti’s sad sea waves. I, newcomer, inherited a Chinese houseboy.

What a lad was he! Somewhere on the sunny side of 60, he was afflicted by Buddha with a frightful double squint, buck teeth, and a very pock-marked countenance. I liked to have him around: he made me feel handsome.

His duties were many: to cook, to press the clothes that another son of the sen suous Orient washed, to run errands to Maxwell’s or the Kong Ah, and to func tion as factotum generally. All of which he did, to my approval mostly. But at our first meeting his methods were a trifle too original quite to suit my taste.

Upon a day—the day of our first meeting, when my outgoing predecessor tremblingly introduced me to Hop Lee, hoping I would suit HIS taste as an employer—l began my take-over by ordering Hop to make some bread. ]y[y predecessor went. The flour was kneaded, while I supported the fainting mortal frame with cabin biscuit, pend ing the final baking.

The staff of life appeared at breakfast; but, for a baker as experienced as Hop claimed to be, it was singularly woebe gone. Ducks, fed with it, would have sunk.

I called the knowledgeable Hop.

“Hop Lee,” quoth I, “No good this bread.”

“Yassuh,” said the Son of Far Cathay, dead-panned. I might have been telling him it was a fine day.

“You savvy,” said I, trying again. “No good this bread. Too much heavy.”

“Ncssuh,” said the Oriental wizard.

This was satisfying; but I felt a cer tain lack of enlightenment as to the whys and wherefores.

“How come, Hop Lee?” I inquired.

“You no usem yeast?”

“Nossuh,” replied the old retainer. “I usem bakinee powdah.”

Baking powder? It was my predeces

sor’s pet aversion; a thing he never allowed to be used in any cooking done for him. I believe his mother had once been frightened by a Seidlitz powder.

Anyhow, I knew there was none in the house, although the little I had eaten of the offending bread had certainly tasted alkaline.

“You bring, show me,” I commanded.

With the air of an honest bank clerk who is suddenly and causelessly ordered by his manager to turn out his pockets, Hop Lee went out to the back regions and returned with a tin. His air was that of the bank clerk aforesaid trium phantly producing a pocketful of small change with his name marked on every three-penny-bit.

“Here, suh,” he said, beaming at his nose in two different directions at an angle of 45 degrees, registering thereby quiet and devoted faithfulness to me, the receiver of the beam on a slightly slanted wave-length. He presented the canister.

“Bakinee powder?” said I.

“Bakinee. powdah, suh.”

The tin was broad; the tin was flat: the tin bore the legend in the tongue of Old Castille, “For Hacer Su Proprio Jafcon”.

Remember that unscrupulous commer cial who sold to a hotel-keener in Wales a sign, framed, “Ici on Parle Francais”?

The unfortunate Boniface thought it meant “God bless our home”.

“Por Hacer Su Proprio Jabon” means “To make your own soap”.

A tin of caustic soda!

Hop Lee lost some of that “face” which is so highly prized in the langour ous East.

Mr. Harold Nicholls, of Ba, Fin, eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. H. Warne N’cholls, of Nadroga, recently married Miss Joan May Allman, eldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. A. E. Allman, of Cuvu. The cere mony took Diace in St. Peter’s Church.

Lautoka. After a brief honeymoon, the counle (both members of well-known Fiji families) took up residence at Ba.

Mr. E. J. Wauchope, of Awar Plantation, Madang, New Guinea, was in Sydney last month spending a short holiday with Mrs. Wauchope and daughter Pat.

Rev. James Edwards, principal of the Melanesian Mission’s Training College for Native Clergy and Teachers at Taroaniara, Solomon Islands has arrived in Aus tralia to do deputation work for the Aus tralian Board of Missions.

Pilot Officer G. E. Miller, formerly of Misima Island, Eastern Papua, is now a captain in a bomber squadron of the RAF in England and has been taking part in raids over Berlin, Cologne, Frank furt and other German cities, as well as Northern France. At one time, Mr. Miller was cashier in Burns, Philp & Co.’s branch at Rabaul, TNG, and later he was sta tioned at Lombrum, before going to Misima.