The next evening, after tea, when Chu Ma was chattering to Mrs. Buckle's amah, Nelly thought it would be nice to have another ride with her father. The gate was again open, and Little Yi was standing near it. When Nelly said that she was going to meet her father, Little Yi offered to go with her. The two children went out, but saw nothing of Mr. Grey. 'We'll walk to the end of the road and look up Legation Street,' said Nelly.
Little Yi was quite willing, and they trotted along, all the Chinese staring very hard to see a little foreign girl in the streets without even an amah to look after her. They had not far to go before they came to the corner, but when they looked up the street they could see no one but Chinese.
'We might walk on a little,' Nelly said. 'He is sure to come this way, and it will be such a nice long ride back. You, Little Yi, can ride with the ma-fu (groom). It will be fun.'
But Mr. Grey had not gone in that direction at all, and the little girls were not likely to see him.
Of course the Chinese went on staring at the children, and a crowd soon gathered round them. Presently some rude boys began to ask them all sorts of questions and to laugh at them. Nelly did not like it at all. She thought she would not wait for her father any longer, but go home. They tried to turn back, but found Chinese all round them, and felt quite frightened. Then a nice, clean-looking woman came up to them and said:
'Don't mind all those people. Come through my house and return home round the other way; I'll show you.'
Nelly and Little Yi thought the woman very kind. They went with her through a door into her compound, and, after crossing two or three court-yards, they came to a small set of rooms which the woman said were hers. She asked the children to sit down, gave them some sugared walnuts, and said she would go and ask her son to take them home.
Chinese sugared walnuts are very good, although they don't look tempting, being of a purplish whity-brown colour. Nelly liked them better than the chocolate creams which auntie always sent for her in the big box of groceries Mrs. Grey had from England twice a year. When all the walnuts were eaten, the children amused themselves by wandering round the room and examining everything in it. It was not at all like any room in an English house. The floor was stone, and part of it, called a kang, was raised like a platform. Every house in North China has one of these kangs, with a little fireplace underneath. In winter the Chinese burn charcoal in this fireplace, and at night they spread wadded quilts on the warm brick platform and sleep there. In the daytime the quilts are rolled up and the kang is used as a seat. The windows were small, with tiny-squares filled in with paper instead of panes of glass. There were two large square arm-chairs and a square table with a tray and some tea-cups upon it. On the walls were scrolls with funny pictures of men running all over each other, like flies on a cake, Nelly thought.
When they had waited a very long time and it was getting dark, the children began to be afraid. The door was locked and they could not get out. Nelly was a brave little girl, but she could not help crying when she thought of the anxiety her parents would be in about her.
'Oh dear,' she sobbed, 'why don't they let us out? Let us scream, Little Yi.'