"Oh, very, Cousin, and I like it very much indeed, only if that's all you thought wonderful, now I want you to tell us what you did that the Chinese thought wonderful."
"It's not very easy to surprise a town-bred Chinaman," said Cousin Peregrine. "What I am going to tell you about now happened in the country. It was up in the north, and in a part where Europeans had very rarely been seen."
"How came you to be there, Cousin Peregrine?"
"I was not on duty. I had got leave for a few days to go up and see Pekin. Therefore I was not in uniform, remember, but in plain clothes.
"On this particular occasion I was on the river Peiho, in one of the clumsy Chinese river-boats. If the wind were favourable, we sailed; if we went with the stream—well and good. If neither stream nor wind were in our favour, the boat was towed."
"Like a barge—with a horse—Cousin Peregrine?"
"Like a barge, Maggie, but not with a horse. One or two of the Chinamen put the rope round them and pulled us along. It was not a quick way of travelling, as you may believe, and when the Peiho was slow and winding, I got out and walked by the paths among the fields."
"Paths and fields—like ours?"
"Yes. Very like some bits of the agricultural parts of England. But no pretty meadows. Every scrap of land seemed to be cultivated for crops. You know the population of China is enormous, and the Chinese are very economical in using their land to produce food, and as they are not great meat-eaters—as we are—their fields are mostly ploughed and sown, so I walked along among rice-fields and cotton-fields, and with little villages here and there, where the cottages are built of mud or stone with tile roofs."