None but a Chinese boy could study in such a din.

In China, when the lesson is finished, the class is silent; noise, therefore, is the indication of work in a Chinese school--not silence.
The schoolmaster was a ragged-looking loafer, dressed in grey.

He was in mourning, and had been unshaven for forty-two days in consequence of the death of his father.

This was an important day of mourning, because on this day, the forty-second after his death, his dead father became, for the first time, aware of his own decease.

A week later, on the forty-ninth day, the funeral rites would cease..