kee you welly
muchee."

Alice was crying too much to answer, especially as she could not find
her handkerchief. I gave her mine, and then she was able to say that
she did not want to walk on anybody's head, and she wanted to go home.

"This not nicee place for lillee whitee girlee," said the young
Chinaman. His pigtail was thicker than his father's and black right up
to the top. The old man's was grey at the beginning, but lower down it
was black, because that part of it was not hair at all, but black
threads and ribbons and odds and ends of trimmings, and towards the end
both pigtails were greenish.

"Me lun backee takee him safee," the younger of the Eastern adventurers
went on, pointing to his father. "Then me makee walkee all alonk you,
takee you back same placee you comee from. Little white devils waitee
for you on ce load. You comee with? Not? Lillee girlee not cly. John
givee her one piecee pletty-pletty. Come makee talkee with the House
Lady."

I believe this is about what he said, and we understood that he wanted
us to come and see his mother, and that he would give Alice something
pretty, and then see us safe out of the horrible brown-grey country.

So we agreed to go with them, for we knew those five boys would be
waiting for us on the way back, most likely with strong reinforcements.
Alice stopped crying the minute she could--I must say she is better than
Dora in that way--and we followed the Chinamen, who walked in single
file like Indians, so we did the same, and talked to each other over our
shoulders. Our grateful Oriental friends led us through a good many
streets, and suddenly opened a door with a key, pulled us in, and shut
the door. Dick thought of the kidnapping of Florence Dombey and good
Mrs. Brown, but Oswald had no such unnoble thoughts.

[Illustration: ON THE SIDEBOARD WAS A BLUEY-WHITE CROCKERY IMAGE.]

The room was small, and very, very odd. It was very dirty too, but
perhaps it is not polite to say that. There was a sort of sideboard at
one end of the room, with an embroidered dirty cloth on it, and on the
cloth a bluey-white crockery image over a foot high. It was very fat and
army and leggy, and I think it was an idol. The minute we got inside the
young man lighted little brown sticks, and set them to burn in front of
it. I suppose it was incense. There was a sort of long, wide, low sofa,
without any arms or legs, and a table that was like a box, with another
box in front of it for