found Chinese all round them, and felt quite frightened. Then a nice, clean-looking woman came up to them and said:

'Don't mind all those people. Come through my house and return home round the other way; I'll show you.'

Nelly and Little Yi thought the woman very kind. They went with her through a door into her compound, and, after crossing two or three court-yards, they came to a small set of rooms which the woman said were hers. She asked the children to sit down, gave them some sugared walnuts, and said she would go and ask her son to take them home.

Chinese sugared walnuts are very good, although they don't look tempting, being of a purplish whity-brown colour. Nelly liked them better than the chocolate creams which auntie always sent for her in the big box of groceries Mrs. Grey had from England twice a year. When all the walnuts were eaten, the children amused themselves by wandering round the room and examining everything in it. It was not at all like any room in an English house. The floor was stone, and part of it, called a kang, was raised like a platform. Every house in North China has one of these kangs, with a little fireplace underneath. In winter the Chinese burn charcoal in this fireplace, and at night they spread wadded quilts on the warm brick platform and sleep there. In the daytime the quilts are rolled up and the kang is used as a seat. The windows were small, with tiny-squares filled in with paper instead of panes of glass. There were two large square arm-chairs and a square table with a tray and some tea-cups upon it. On the walls were scrolls with funny pictures of men running all over each other, like flies on a cake, Nelly thought.

When they had waited a very long time and it was getting dark, the children began to be afraid. The door was locked and they could not get out. Nelly was a brave little girl, but she could not help crying when she thought of the anxiety her parents would be in about her.

'Oh dear,' she sobbed, 'why don't they let us out? Let us scream, Little Yi.'

And both the children shrieked their hardest, until they heard footsteps hurrying across the court.

The door was unlocked, and the woman who had brought the children there came in with a very old woman, a girl of sixteen, and a boy of ten.

'What is the matter?' they asked.

'Oh, take us home,' cried Nelly. 'It is quite dark.'

The boy having brought a lamp, the room was no longer in darkness, but Nelly meant that as it was dark it must be late.

'We can't take you home,' said the woman. 'None of us know the way to the British Legation except my son, who is not here. He will not be home now until to-morrow. He went outside the city into the country, and must have arrived at the gate after it was closed.'

'Then please take us to the door you brought us through and lend us a lantern, and we can find our way quite well,' said Nelly.

'No, no, you can't. You would get lost,' replied the woman. 'You must wait here until my son comes home.'

'We won't,' said Little Yi, and made a rush for the door. But the boy caught her and forced her back on the kang.

'Why do you want to keep us?' asked Nelly.

'It is our custom in China, when we find children, to keep them until we can hand them over to their parents,' said the woman whom they had thought so nice, but whom they now considered very cruel.

She was a tidy-looking woman, wearing black trousers bound tight round the ankles, and the usual blue cotton smock. Her feet were not very small, and she could walk about fairly quickly. The old woman was very ugly and untidy, but the girl evidently gave a good deal of attention to her toilet. She had silk trousers and a handsomely embroidered smock over them. Her feet were very small, and just like a claw. Her hair, which was a beautiful jet black, was dressed most elaborately with a sort of comb behind, and flowers stuck in. Her lips were stained red and her face was powdered. She wore long silver nail-protectors on the third and fourth fingers of each hand, and had very large round jewelled earrings. The boy had a greasy black cotton coat and a thick long tail of hair.

Nelly tried her best to persuade the family to allow Little Yi and her to go, but they would not listen to her. Then Little Yi began.

'You don't know what bad luck you will have if you keep a foreign child all night,' she said. 'The foreigners are wonderful people. They can do all sorts of things—take out their teeth and put them back again, their eyes too, some of them.'

There was once at Peking a gentleman with a glass eye, and Little Yi had heard that he was able to remove it. As for teeth, she knew quite well that the British Minister slept with his on his wash-stand every night.

When Little Yi found that the women were not at all afraid, she said:

'If you keep us here, she (pointing to Nelly) will die, and then she will always haunt you. Everything you eat will taste bitter and make you ill.'

But Nelly never would allow Little Yi to romance and tell untruths. She was crying bitterly now, but she stopped and told the woman that she was a Christian, and that Christians do not die on purpose to haunt people out of spite, as heathen do.

But the children found that it was useless to try to persuade or frighten the Chinese. Nelly gave it up and asked for something to eat.

'To be sure,' said their first acquaintance; 'I have told the coolie (a Chinese servant who does only the rough work) to bring you something.'

She had hardly finished speaking when the man arrived with two bowls, in which was a sort of soup containing little pieces of meat and vegetables. The children were given chopsticks with which to fish out the meat, and were expected to take the soup from the bowl. Then they had a piece of Chinese bread, which is like steamed dumpling, and half an apple each. Nelly might have enjoyed the meal if there had not been eight eyes watching her all the time, and the old woman constantly peering at her clothes and feeling them.

When all was eaten they were told that they were to sleep on the kang with the girl, who would look after them until morning. The other three then left them, shutting and locking the door.

As soon as they were gone, the girl began to talk freely. She said her name was An Ching, and that she was the daughter-in-law of the woman Ku Nai-nai who had brought them there. Her husband was the son who, Ku Nai-nai said, was to take them home. The boy was his brother and the old woman their grandmother. Lowering her voice, she told them that her husband was not away from home at all, and that he intended to keep Nelly and Little Yi until he heard that a reward had been offered for finding them, and for her part she was very glad that they were there. It was very dull for An Ching. Her mother-in-law would not let her stand at the door and look up and down the street as some young wives were allowed to do. She also told them that Hung Li, her husband, lived at a city called Yung Ching, and he, she, and Ku Nai-nai were to go back there next day.

An Ching was very anxious to see Nelly undress, and got quite excited over her clothes. She had never seen foreign clothes before. Little Yi became quite lively in showing off Nelly and talking about all the wonderful things foreigners had, but Nelly felt very unhappy. She longed for her dear father and mother and her own little bed, and she