“Were these the men you showed something to that they thought wonderful?”

“Yes, Fred. And now I’ll tell you what it was.  You must know that I could speak no Chinese, and my new friends could speak no English, so they chattered like magpies to each other, and laughed like children or Chinamen—­for the Chinese are very fond of a joke.  When they laughed I laughed, and we bowed and shook hands, and they turned me round and felt me all over, and felt my hands.”

“What about your hands, Cousin?”

“I had on dog-skin gloves, yellow ones.  Now when all the male population of the hamlet had stroked these very carefully, I perceived that they had never seen gloves before, and that they believed themselves to be testing the feel of a barbarian’s skin.”

“Barbarian?”

“Certainly, Bessie.  They give us the same polite name that we feel ourselves more justified in applying to them.  Well, when they had laughed, and I had laughed, and we had shaken hands afresh, laughing heartily as we did so, and I began to feel it was time to go on and catch up my boat, which was floating sluggishly down the winding stream of the Peiho, I resolved on one final effect, like the last scene of a dramatic performance.  Making vigorous signs and noises, to intimate that something was coming, and they must look out sharp, and feeling very much like a conjurer who has requested his audience to keep their eyes on him and ’see how it’s done’—­I slyly unbuttoned my gloves, and then with much parade began to draw one off by the finger-tips.

“‘Eyah!  Eyah!’ cried the Chinamen on all the notes of the gamut, as they fell back over each other. They thought I was skinning my hands.  I ‘smiled superior,’ as I took the gloves off, and made an effect almost as great by putting them on again.”

“Oh, Cousin Peregrine, weren’t they astonished?”

“They were, Maggie, And unless they are more familiar with Europeans now, the mystery is probably to this day as unsolved to them as the trick of the ball of thread and the twelve needles still is to me.  By this time, however, my boat was

‘Far off, a blot upon the stream,’

and I had to hasten away as fast as I could to catch it up.  I parted on the most friendly terms from my narrow-eyed acquaintance, but when I had nearly regained my boat I could still see them in their blue-cotton dresses and long pigtails, gazing open-mouthed at my vanishing figure across the rice-fields.”

* * * * *

After a few seconds’ silence, during which Maggie had sat with her eyes thoughtfully fixed on the fire, she said, “Cousin Peregrine, you said in your letters that it was very cold in the north of China.  If Chinamen know nothing about gloves, how can they keep their hands warm?” Maggie had a little the air of regarding this question as a poser, but Cousin Peregrine was not disconcerted.