“Haven't you got a coat to put over you,” said she looking round, and she seized my burberry which was the only thing in the shape of a wrap I had with me. Chinese ideas of propriety evidently influenced her very strongly.
I declined to wear a burberry on a hot day late in May, though all the Chinese Empire were shocked and horrified at my impropriety, but I sought round and found a lace veil which, draped over me, was a little suggestive of a bridal festivity, but apparently satisfied all conditions, and then I went out to mount into that abomination—a Peking cart. The Peking cart that is used for visiting has a little trestle carried over the back end of the shafts, which is taken down when the occupant wishes to mount and dismount, so I got into the seat of honour, the most uncomfortable seat well under the tilt, and Tuan, glorious in a long black silk brocade robe, his queue newly oiled and plaited, and a big straw hat upon his head, climbed on to the tail of the shaft, and the carter, dressed in the ordinary blue of his class, with the ordinary rag over his head to keep off the dust, walked beside the most venerable white mule I have ever come across. I don't know whether aged animals are held in respect in China, I'm afraid not. The poor old thing had great deep hollows over his eyes. I suspect Tuan had got him cheap, because the cart was respectable, and he had been good once—of course he would never have let me lose face—and then he made me pay full price, a whole fivepence I think it came to.
“That's a very old mule, Tuan,” I said.
“Yes,” he assented, “very old, she forty,” which was certainly more than I had reckoned him. I afterwards came to the conclusion he meant fourteen.
What Tuan was there for, I certainly don't know, except to carry my card-case, which I was perfectly capable of carrying myself.
We went out into the dusty, mud-coloured street, and along between mud-coloured walls of the dullest, most uninteresting description, and presently we arrived at the yamen gates, and here it was evident that Tuan, who had been so important all across the mountains, was now quite out of his depth.
“Cart no can go,” said he. “Missie get out.”
I was prepared for that. “No,” I said very important for once in my life, “I wait till someone comes.”
The yamen entrance was divided into three, as all Chinese entrances seem to be, and over it were curved tiled roofs with a little colouring, faded and shabby, about them; all of it was badly in need of repair, and on the fast-closed gates in the middle were representations of some demon apparently in a fit, but his aspect was a little spoiled by the want of a fresh coat of paint. The two little gates at either side were open, and here clustered Chinese soldiers in khaki, and men in civilian dress of blue cotton, and all stared at the foreign woman who was not a missionary, in the cart; that is the rude ones stared, and the polite ones looked uncomfortably out of the corners of their eyes. A Chinaman's politeness in this respect always ends by making me uncomfortable. A good, downright stare that says openly: “I am taking you in with all my eyes,” I can stand, but the man who looks away and down and out of the corners of his eyes gets on my nerves in no time.
However, this time I had not long to wait. After a minute or two out came a messenger, a Chinese of the better class, for he was dressed in a bright blue silk coat and petticoats, with a black sleeveless jacket over it, and the gates at his command, to my boy's immense astonishment, opened, and my cart rumbled into the first courtyard. We went on into a second—bare, ugly courtyards they were, without a flower or a tree or any green thing to rest the eye upon—and then I got down as there came to meet me a small bare-headed man without a queue, and his thick black hair apparently cut with a saw and done with a fork. He wore an ill-fitting suit of foreign clothes, and about his neck, instead of a collar, one of those knitted wraps an Englishwoman puts inside her coat when the weather is cold. On his feet were the white socks and heelless slippers of the Chinese. Instead of the dignified greeting the first man had given me he remarked genially, and offhandedly: “Hallo, Missus!” and he did it with a certain confidence, as if he really would show the numerous bystanders that he knew how to receive a lady.