"Street confectioners, Maggie, with small movable sweetmeat stalls, which they carry on their backs. Men with portable stoves too, who always have a cup of tea ready for you for a small coin worth about the twentieth part of a penny. Tiny-footed women toddling awkwardly along, with children—also cramp-footed—toddling awkwardly after them, dressed in all the colours of the rainbow, and with their poor little arms stuck out at right angles with their bodies, to help them to keep their balance. Even the blind beggars, who go along striking on a bell to let people know that they are blind, as otherwise they might be knocked over, even they used to stop and listen to my juggler's jokes, though they could not see his tricks.
"All this was in the street; but sometimes I got him to come into my own courtyard to do his tricks there, that I might watch him more carefully. But watch as I might, I could never see how he did this particular feat. He used to do it with no clothes on except a pair of short trousers, for in the hot season, you must know, the lower classes of Chinese go about naked to the waist. Indeed, hot as it is, they don't wear hats. The juggler possessed both a hat and a jacket, as it happened, but he took them off when he did his trick."
"And what was the trick?" asked several impatient voices. "What did he do?"
"He used to swallow ten or twelve needles one after the other, and 'wash them down' with a ball of thread, which he swallowed next, and by and by he used to draw the thread slowly out of his mouth, yard after yard, and it had all the needles threaded on it."
"Oh, Cousin Peregrine!"
"He used to come quite close to me, Maggie, as close as I am to you now, and take each needle—one after the other—between the finger and thumb of his right hand—keeping all the other fingers away from it, stick the point of it for a moment into his other palm, to show that it was sharp, and then to all appearance swallow it bodily before your eyes. In this way he seemed to swallow successively all the twelve needles. Then he opened his mouth, that you might ascertain that they were not there, and you certainly could not see them. He next swallowed a little ball of thread, not much bigger than a pea. This being done, he seemed to be very uneasy (as well he might be!), and he made fearful faces and violent gestures, and stamped on the ground, and muttered incantations, and threw up his hands and eyes to the sky; and presently the end of a thread was to be seen coming out between his teeth, upon which he took hold of this end, and carefully drew out the thread with all the needles threaded on it. Then there was always much applause, and the small coins used to be put pretty liberally into the hat which he handed round to receive them."
"Was that all?" asked the young gentleman of the adventure books.
"All what, Fred?"
"All that you thought wonderful."
"Yes," said Cousin Peregrine. "Don't you think it curious?"