The "Mandarin Americans" quite agreed with the conclusion drawn by Sky-High.
It was about this time that little Lucy began to wonder if Sky-High were not a wang indeed. No common young Chinese could possess so many kinds of wisdom. He was able to read to her the labels on tea-chests, and to explain the odd figures on the many fans that decorated her playroom.
"How do you know so much, Sky-High?" she asked one day when he had told her the meaning of the pictures on an old Chinese porcelain in the upper hall.
"Many of the porcelains in our country are made to be read," he said. "All educated Chinese people can read porcelains. An American porcelain has no story."
VI.
THE MANDARIN PLATE.
Among the heirlooms to be found in the closets of many New England houses is a curious pattern of China plate. This plate is colored blue-and-white, and in the bowl of each is a picture. The picture represents a rural scene in China—a bridge on which are two young people, a man and a woman; a house, and a tree, and two birds of beautiful plumage flying away. Mrs. Van Buren had such a plate, and a platter with the same rural picture, on her dining-room wall.
It was the delight of Lucy to have Sky-High explain to her the meaning of the pictures on the Chinese vases and on an ornamental Chinese umbrella which hung in the reception-room. One day when Sky-High was dusting in the dining-room, Lucy's eye fell on the blue-and-white plate with the picture of the bridge and birds.