What will all these busy people have for dinner to-day?  Fat bears’-paws, brought from the dark forest fifty miles away,—­these will do for that comfortable-looking mandarin with the red ball on the top of his cap.  I think he has eaten something of the same kind before.  A birds’-nest soup for my lady in the great house on the hill; birds’ nests brought from the rocks where the waves dash, and the birds feel themselves very safe.  But “Such a delicious soup!” said Madam Faw-Choo, and Yang-lo, her son, sent the fisherman again to the black rocks for more.

What will the soldiers have,—­the officer who wears thick satin boots, and doesn’t look much like fighting in his gay silk dress?  A stew of fat puppies for him, and only boiled rats for the porter who carries the heavy tea-boxes.  But there is tea for all, and rice, too, as much as they desire; and, although I shouldn’t care to be invited to dine with any of them, I don’t doubt they enjoy the food very much.

In the midst of all this buying and selling Lin sells his fish, some to the English gentleman, and some to the grave-faced man in the blue gown; and he goes happily home to his own dinner in the boat.  Rice again, and fried mice, and the merry face and small, slanting black eyes of his little sister to greet him.  After dinner his father has a pipe to smoke, before he goes again to his work.  After all, why not eat puppies and mice as well as calves and turtles and oysters?  And as for birds’-nest soup, I should think it quite as good as chicken pie.  It is only custom that makes any difference.

So pass the days of our child Pen-se, who lives on the great river which men call the child of the ocean.  But it was not always so.  She was born among the hills where the tea grows with its glossy, myrtle-like leaves, and white, fragrant blossoms.  When the tea-plants were in bloom, Pen-se first saw the light; and when she was hardly more than a baby she trotted behind her father, while he gathered the leaves, dried and rolled them, and then packed them in square boxes to come in ships across the ocean for your papa and mine to drink.

Here, too, grew the mulberry-trees, with their purple fruit and white; and Pen-se learned to know and to love the little worms that eat the mulberry-leaves, and then spin for themselves a silken shell, and fall into a long sleep inside of it.  She watched her mother spin off the fine silk and make it into neat skeins, and once she rode on her mother’s back to market to sell it.  You could gather mulberry-leaves, and set up these little silkworm boxes on the windowsill of your schoolroom.  I have seen silk and flax and cotton all growing in a pleasant schoolroom, to show the scholars of what linen and silk and cotton are made.

Now those days are all past.  She can hardly remember them, she was so little then; and she has learned to be happy in her new home on the river, where they came when the fire burned their house, and the tea-plants and the mulberry-trees were taken by other men.