Long before daybreak he was about again, attending to the mule and preparing my porridge and eggs for breakfast.

He thought I liked my eggs hard, and each morning construed my look of remonstrance into one of approbation.
It is very true of the Chinaman that precedent determines his action.
The first morning Laohwan boiled the eggs hard and I could not reprove him.

Afterwards of course he made a point of serving me the eggs every morning in the same way.

I could say in Chinese "I don't like them," but the morning I said so Laohwan applied my dislike to the eggs not to their condition of cooking, and saying in Chinese "good, good," he obligingly ate them for me.
Leaving the valley we ascended the red incline to an open tableland, where the soil is arid, and yields but a reluctant and scanty harvest.
Nothing obstructs the view, and you can see long distances over the downs, which are bereft of all timber except an occasional clump of pines that the axe has spared because of the beneficial influence the geomancers declare they exercise over the neighbourhood.

The roadway in places is cut deeply into the ground; for the path worn by the attrition of countless feet soon becomes a waterchannel, and the roadway in the rains is often the bed of a rapid stream.