She turned to the others.
“Shall we come here tomorrow?” she inquired.
Mai Mou looked at her “little mother.”
“Let us come,” said Ko-Tua, after a little hesitation. “We shall then be able to learn more of the English.”
Nor Ghai laughed at that and said, with a pretty courtesy:
“We shall come.”
Then they glided from the pavilion with quick little steps that were not ungraceful, and we stood silently in our places until all sounds of their departure had ceased.
We were much elated by this meeting, and had no thought of the danger we might incur by arranging for a future interview with the charming orientals. You must not think we had fallen in love with these Chinese beauties, for that was not the case. I don’t say that I shall never fall in love; but when I do it will be with an American girl, and it won’t matter much whether she is beautiful or not, so long as I love her.
But I think every well regulated young fellow is fond of chatting with nice girls, and in this heathen country we were so beset with dangers and had so little companionship outside of our circle of three, that it was a pleasant change to meet these pretty maids and converse with them.
“It’s wrong, you know,” remarked Archie, as we wandered slowly back to the palace. “That is, from the standard of Chinese etiquette. We may really get ‘sliced’ if we keep up the meetings, and even if we escape that, the girls will be terribly punished if they’re caught.”