“Did you see any ladies with half their feet cut off?”

“Did you live in a house with bells hanging from the roof?”

“Are the Chinese like the people on Mamma’s fan?”

“Did you wear a pigtail?”

Cousin Peregrine’s hair was so very short that the last question raised a roar of laughter, after which the chorus spoke with one voice—­

“Do tell us all about China!”

At which he put on a serio-comic countenance, and answered with much gravity—­

“Oh, certainly, with all my heart.  It will be rather a long story, but never mind.  By the way, I am afraid I can hardly begin much before the birth of Confucius, but as that happened in or about the year 550 B.C., you will still have to hear about two thousand four hundred years of its history or so, which will keep us going for a few months”.

“Confucius—­whose real name was Kwang-Foo-Tsz (and if you can pronounce that last word properly you can do more than many eminent Chinese scholars can)—­was born in the province of Kan Tang ——.

“Oh, not about Confuse-us!” pleaded a little maid on Cousin Peregrine’s knee.  “Tell us what you did.”

“But tell us wonderful things,” stipulated a young gentleman, fresh from The Boy Hunters and kindred works.

If young bachelors have a weak point when they are kind to children, it is that they are apt to puzzle them with paradoxes.  Even Cousin Peregrine did “sometimes tease,” so his cousins said.

On this occasion he began a long rambling speech, in which he pretended not to know what things are and what are not wonderful.  The Boy Hunters young gentleman fell headlong into the quagmire of definitions, but the oldest sister, who had her own ideas about things, said firmly—­

“Wonderful things are things which surprise you very much, and which you never saw before, and which you don’t understand.  Like as if you saw a lot of giants coming out of a hole in the road.  At least that’s what we mean by wonderful.”

“Upon my word, Maggie,” said Cousin Peregrine, “your definition is most admirable.  I cannot say that I have met with giants in China, even in the north, where the men are taller than in the south.  But I can tell you of something I saw in China which surprised me very much, which I had never seen before, and which, I give you my word, I don’t understand to this hour, but which I have no doubt was not in the least wonderful to the poor half-naked Chinaman who did it in my courtyard.  And then, if you like, I will tell you something else which surprised some Chinese country-folk very much, which they never saw before, and which they certainly did not understand when they did see it.  Will that do?”

“Oh yes, yes!  Thank you, yes!” cried the chorus, and Maggie said—­

“First all about the thing you thought wonderful, you know.”

“Well, the thing I thought wonderful was a conjuring trick done by a Chinese juggler.”