Read Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station for Free Online Page A

only Mr. Li was to be permanent and
theirs
; the others would come and go, with names like Chu and Tung, leaving only vague impressions behind.
    In any case, Mrs. Pollifax felt that her sense of inner time was still so confused that a banquet in late afternoon could scarcely be more difficult than breakfast at night over the Pacific. They were here, very definitely in China, on the second floor of a huge old wooden building in aroom filled with large round tables, only one of which was occupied by a family of Chinese who ate and talked with enthusiasm in a far corner: a wedding party, explained Mr. Li.
    With her chopsticks Mrs. Pollifax lifted a slice of sugared tomato toward her mouth and experienced triumph at its arrival. From where she sat she could look out across the restaurant’s courtyard and see a line of clothes hung on a rope stretched from eave to eave: an assortment of grays, dull blues, and greens. She decided that it was probably not someone’s laundry because the wide street outside had been lined with just such clothing too, hung like banners from every apartment above the street floor. Presumably it was an efficient solution to a lack of closet space, and remembering her own crowded closets at home she pondered the effect on her neighbors if she did this at the Hemlock Arms.
    Mr. Li, seated beside her, chose this moment to announce, “It is important there be a leader to this group. You are oldest, Mrs. Pollifax, you will please be leader?”
    Mrs. Pollifax, glancing around, said doubtfully, “I’m the oldest, yes, but I wonder if perhaps—” She stopped, aware that Iris’ eyes were growing huge with alarm at the thought of her deferring to a man and betraying The Cause. She wondered if later it would prove convenient or inconvenient to be a leader, and Carstairs’ words drifted back to her:
if anything unusual happens—if anything goes wrong—get that group the hell out of China
. Possibly, she decided, it might prove convenient. “Yes of course,” she said, and smiled demurely at Iris across the table.
    Mr. Li laughed merrily. “Good-okay! You can find for me out of each person what they most want to see. For the arrangements. We cannot promise them, it is the local guides who decide, but I struggle for you.”
    “Yes,” said Mrs. Pollifax, and decided not to mention the Drum Tower in Xian just yet.
    “For tomorrow,” said Mr. Li, “Mr. Tung has arranged—” He bent his ear to Mr. Tung and surfaced, nodding. “We visit Dr. Sun Yet-sen Memorial Hall, the panda at the zoo, various other stops, and late in afternoon departure to Xian.”
    “The beginning of the Silk Road,” pointed out Malcolm, nodding.
    George Westrum, on her left, said gruffly, “For myself, I’ll say right now that I want to see their farms, and the equipment they have. That’ll be communes, of course.”
    “I’ll make a note of that,” she told him. “You’re a farmer, George?”
    “Have a few acres,” he said.
    Mrs. Pollifax gave him an exasperated glance. She had wrested words out of young Peter, and had witnessed Malcolm’s evasiveness, and she was bored with all this modesty. She asked bluntly, “How many?”
    “Several thousand,” he admitted.
    “Cows, horses, sheep, or grain?” she shot back.
    “Beef cattle. And oil.”
    “Aha!”
    He nodded. “A surprise to me, that oil,” he said. “Retired early from government work—”
    “Government work?”
    “Yes, and bought a ranch, expecting to raise cattle, not oil. That young lady I saw you talking to on the train,” he said casually, with a not-so-casual glance across the table at Iris. “She Miss or Mrs. Damson?”
    Mrs. Pollifax’s
aha
was silent this time. “I haven’t the slightest idea,” she told him cheerfully, “except that I do know she’s not married now. Is this a thousand-year-old egg?” she asked, turning to Mr. Li.
    “Oh yes, but
not
a thousand years old,” he said with his quick smile and another merry laugh.
    “It