CHINA AT LAST. 371

“Thank you, Mr. Wadham. We shall be right glad to go. And
I hope you will excuse my nephew Rick. Rick, why didn’t you
stop when I called ‘man-man’ to you?”

“J didn’t hear you, uncle, and they seemed willing to go.”

“ Willing!” observed the old gentleman. ‘Those boobies are glad
enough to get a foreigner into a scrape.”

“T beg your pardon, sir,” said Rick courteously. “I did not see
you, sir.”

“Oh, let it go. Those boobies don’t know anything.”

Having relieved himself of his indignation in his opinion about
the Chinese, half-ashamed, also, of himself for making so much of
the matter, Mr. Wadham whispered to Uncle Nat: “Fact is, cap’n,
I tried that very same thing myself the first time I had a chance,
years ago.”

He now returned to

his chair, and the pro-
cession moved away to-
ward his house.

Rick having enjoyed the
sense of motion, now pre-
pared to exercise the sense
of seeing. He noticed
that the street was bor-
dered by quite good look-
ing buildings covered with
a gyrayish-brown cement.
On the door-step of one
house, he noticed a little

 

girl, to whom an old
citizen of the Flowery Land was giving — was it an orange or a lime?