coffee while Mr. Van Buren was saying
grace. He paused before the table.

"Sleepy, sleepy!" he exclaimed softly, "all sleepy!"

Mrs. Van Buren put out her hand as a signal for him to wait. Sky-High
did not understand, and the grace was concluded amid smiles.

Sky-High wondered much what had made the family sleepy at that time of
the day. They did not go to sleep at the breakfast-table in China.

"The mistress and her people," said he to Nora, "shut their eyes and go
to sleep at the breakfast."

"An' sure, it is quare you are yourself! They were praying. Don't you
ever say prayers, Sky-High?"

"My country has printed prayers," said Sky-High with lofty dignity.

"You're a hathen people. Here we call such as you a 'hathen Chinee,' and
there was a Californan poet that wrote a whole piece about the likes of
you. Children speak it at school. Here is the toast--carry it up!"

Lucy liked to see the little olive-colored "wang" moving about.
One day at the table she requested him to bring her a cup of tea. The
little Chinaman well knew that Lucy and Charles were not permitted to
have tea. He inquired whether he should make it in the American or the
Chinese way.

"In the way you would for a wang," said Lucy.

Sky-High soon re-appeared, his tray bearing a pretty little covered cup
and a silver pitcher.

"Where is the tea?" asked Lucy.

"It is in the cup, like a wang's," said Sky-High.

He poured the hot water on the tea, and fragrance filled the room.

Lucy, with a glance asking her mother's leave, tasted the tea she had
roguishly ordered.

"We do not have tea like this," she said; "is it tea?"

"Like a wang's," said Sky-High, blinking.

"Where did you get it?" asked Lucy.

"Out of my tea-canister," said Sky-High.

Little Lucy did not drink the tea, for little Lucy had never drunk
a cup of tea; but its fragrance lingered about the house through the
day, and set her wondering what else the little Chinaman's immense trunk
might hold.

It had been agreed between the Consul and Mrs. Van Buren that little
Sky-High might talk with the family; and like her husband she found the
Chinese boy "a new book." She asked him many a curious question about
the "Flowery Kingdom," and one day she learned that "we never send our
finest teas out of China." Yes "we" said the washee-washee-wang, as the
neighbor-boys called him.

IV.

HOW SKY-HIGH CALLED THE GOVERNOR.

Cheerfully, in his fine blue linens, the little C