Billings subsided limply into a chair.
"Great Thomas cats!" he gasped weakly.
"I think I divine the astute purpose of your inquiry," said the professor, pausing to polish his glasses and favoring us with a wintry smile. "It does not deceive me. You have in mind, sir, the erroneous chronology that places Si-Ling-Chi thirteen centuries earlier. Ha! Is not my suspicion correct?"
"Regular bull's-eye!" responded Billings. "I mean," he added hastily, "what's the use of denying it?"
"Twenty-six centuries before the Christian era is the best we can give Si-Ling-Chi," said the professor, carefully affixing his glasses and falling once more upon the pajamas.
"By Jove!" I said dazedly. "Then the lady—er—I mean the party—she's rather far back—er—isn't she, don't you know?"
The professor answered abstractedly:
"Two thousand years before Confucius; twenty-four hundred and twenty-nine years before the building of the Great Wall," he murmured mechanically.
Jove, but I was relieved! I looked inquiringly at Billings. He just sat there kind of drooping, and shook his head. "I'm all in," he motioned with his lips; and he wiped his forehead.
"Ah, gentlemen!" exclaimed the professor, coming back again, "what a thing this little Chinese woman did for civilization when she gave the world silk culture and invented the loom! No wonder the Chinese deified her as a goddess."