“I don’t understand yet,” said the Briton.
“Why, it’s this way, I feel perfectly at home in these woods; the Hindoos were just as much at home a few miles back; the place seems to suit all sorts and conditions of different civilizations, not one civilization only; and the Queen lets them live at home here in peace.”
“They fight like cats and dogs,” said the engineer promptly. “We have the devil’s own time to keep the home, as you call it, quiet.”
“It must be the children that cut up so,” laughed Adele. “Every home is supposed to have its nursery—the world no doubt has; people often call Asia the cradle of the human race. This seems to me to be like God’s nursery.”
“And England’s the nurse!” shouted the Briton.
“Yes, that’s about it.”
“Well, here comes another baby, fresh from the woods, to be taken into the nursery. What do you think of this precious babe? I hand her over to you.”
What Adele saw for the first time was a large, stout Mongolian woman, broad-visaged with slanting eyes, very dirty and unkempt, accompanied by two men of similar mien, neither of whom appeared so masculine as the precious babe herself. These had wandered down from the upper regions—the first glimpse to Adele of the next race they were to encounter.
“Babes in the woods,” remarked the Englishman.
Adele concluded not to call this one a cherub.