“Well,” said Mrs. Van Buren, “you shall tell your father how you found little Sky-High—­it will be a pretty after-supper story.  I want you to think kindly of him, for if he does well he is to stay with us a year.”

The children found their father in the dining-room; and as they kissed him they both cried, “Oh, oh!”

“What is it now?” asked Mr. Van Buren.  “What has happened to-day?”

“Wait until after supper,” said Mrs. Van Buren; “then they shall tell you of a curious event in the kitchen.  There really is something to tell,” she added, smiling.

II.

Before the mandarin!

As Mr. Van Buren was a prudent, wise, and good-natured man, he left all the affairs of housekeeping to his wife.  He had so seldom been “below stairs” that he never had even made the acquaintance of Polly, the lively bird of the kitchen.  The kitten sometimes came up to visit him; on which occasions she simply purred, and sank down to rest on his knee.

After supper was over, Mr. Van Buren caught Lucy up.

“And now what amusing thing is it that my little girl has to tell me—­something new that Nora has told you of the Fairy Shoemaker?”

“There’s really a wonderful thing down in the kitchen, father,” said Lucy; “wonderfuller than anything in the Fairy Shoemaker tales.”

“And where did it come from?”

“Down from the sun, father, and Nora says it came in a coach!”

Mr. Van Buren turned to his wife.

“It came from the Consul’s,” she said—­“from Consul Bradley’s.”

“Has Consul Bradley been here?” he asked, thinking some Chinese curio had been shipped over.  Consul Bradley was a Chinese consular agent, a man of considerable wealth, with a large knowledge of the world, and a friend of the Van Buren family.

“No,” said Mrs. Van Buren, “but his coach-man has brought me a kitchen-boy.”

“Well, that is rather wonderful!  Is that what you have down-stairs, Lucy?”

“That doesn’t half tell it, father,” cried Charlie.  “He’s a little Chineseman!”

“I was in the Consul’s office this morning,” went on Mrs. Van Buren, smiling at her husband’s astonishment; “and the Consul said to me, ’Wouldn’t you like to have a neat, trim, tidy, honest, faithful, tender-hearted, polite boy to learn general work?’ I said to the Consul, ‘Yes, that is the person that I have been needing for years.’  He said, ’Would you have any prejudice against a little Chinese servant, if he were trusty, after the general principles I have described?’ I said to him, ‘None whatever.’  He continued:  ’A Chinese lad from Manchuria has been sent to me by a friend in the hong, and I am asked to find him a place to learn American home-making ideas in one of the best families.  Your family is that place—­shall I send him?’ So he came in the Consul’s coach, as Lucy said, and with him an immense trunk covered with Chinese brush-marks.  He seems to be a little gentleman; and when I asked him his name he said, ‘The Consul told me to tell you to call me Sky-High.’  He doesn’t speak except to make replies, but these are in very good English.”