When he was
rapped on the knuckles and elbows, with which he shielded his face
and head, his winces were genuine and involuntary. From the many
surrounding windows the neighbourhood looked down with placid
enjoyment.
And she who wielded the stick so shrewdly from long practice!
Seventy-four years old, she looked every minute of her time. Her
thin legs were encased in straight-lined pants of linen stiff-
textured and shiny-black. Her scraggly grey hair was drawn
unrelentingly and flatly back from a narrow, unrelenting forehead.
Eyebrows she had none, having long since shed them. Her eyes, of
pin-hole tininess, were blackest black. She was shockingly
cadaverous. Her shrivelled forearm, exposed by the loose sleeve,
possessed no more of muscle than several taut bowstrings stretched
across meagre bone under yellow, parchment-like skin. Along this
mummy arm jade bracelets shot up and down and clashed with every
blow.
"Ah!" she cried out, rhythmically accenting her blows in series of
three to each shrill observation. "I forbade you to talk to Li
Faa.
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