CHAPTER VII
THE CHESHIRE CAT
It began to be very hot about the middle of May. The Ku family had put their wadded clothes away and taken to cottons and thin silks. Nelly and Little Yi were also supplied with some very plain unwadded cotton coats and trousers at the same time. But in spite of this the little foreigner, as the Chinese called her, began to feel the heat and confinement of the small compound. She thought of her friends, who would all be preparing to go to the hills with their parents, and the days seemed very long. It was hard just to wait, with nothing at all happening. One day was just like another. There were no Sundays, no letters, no books, no lessons. The time was not even divided into weeks. Nelly quite lost count of the date. She only knew it Chinese fashion, by the number of new moons there had been since the Chinese New Year.
It appeared as though Hung Li never would go to Peking as he had said, but he did start one day at the end of May, and An Ching told the children that he intended to see the barber and arrange for them to be handed over to their parents. He had business to do on the way to Peking as well as in that city, so that he would be away some time, An Ching said.
Nelly was very glad to see Hung Li start, and she leaped through the round hole in the wall again and again, really and truly jumping for joy. She made An Ching and Little Yi sing their very best and loudest, until the small court resounded with the strains of 'Art thou weary,' and Ku Nai-nai, who was rather deaf, and shouted a good deal when she talked, heard the singing in her room, where she was sitting smoking on the kang. Little Yi and An Ching soon tired of singing so hard this hot day, but Nelly was too full of delight at the thought that Hung Li was actually off to feel any fatigue. She was more like little Nelly Grey of the British Legation than she had been since that unlucky day on which she wandered from home. She kept up her spirits and energy for two or three days, and then something happened.
One morning the two children and An Ching had been singing and Nelly giving her English lessons as usual, when Ku Nai-nai came out, and in her usual rough, loud, screaming voice when angry, demanded why they were wasting time there instead of helping to get the mid-day meal ready. An Ching had quite forgotten that the old woman-servant was not well, and was shut up in her room out of the way. The children began to follow An Ching; but Ku Nai-nai, who certainly appeared to have got out of bed the wrong side that morning (only you can't get off a kang except at one side), would not allow Nelly in the cook-house. 'No foreigners shall meddle with my food,' she said; whereat Nelly was very glad, for she had only offered to go and help on An Ching's account.
So Ku Nai-nai hustled off An Ching and Little Yi, at the same time telling Nelly to stay where she was. Nelly, left to herself, drew the bench upon which she had been sitting quite near the wall, so as to be in the shade. Presently she heard something scraping against the wall on the other side, and it seemed as though there were voices quite close.
The Chinese being very fond or privacy, all the compound walls are built very high and solid, and as the houses are only one storey high, no one can see into his neighbour's premises. Nelly did not remember to have heard any sounds coming from the next compound before; but noises there were, sure enough, and the talking became more and more distinct. Nelly got up from her seat to look at the wall. As she did so, she saw what was evidently a Chinaman's head just above the top, and she heard him quite distinctly tell some one below 'to hold the ladder tight.' Nelly was just wondering what she should do, and was half inclined to run through the hole into the next court, when the rest of the head came into view, and she saw that it belonged to a plump, pleasant looking Chinaman. It was very round, and Nelly was at once reminded of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland. It and she looked at each other for some seconds. Nelly was the first to speak.