As soon as he heard what Wang Chih wanted, he opened two windows at the back of the hut, and told him to look through each of them in turn.
“Tell me what you see,” said the Hare, going back to the table where he was pounding the drugs.
“I can see a great many houses and people,” said Wang Chih, “and streets—why, this is the town I was in yesterday, the one which has taken the place of my old village.”
Wang Chih stared, and grew more and more puzzled. Here he was up in the moon, and yet he could have thrown a stone into the busy street of the Chinese town below his window.
“How does it come here,” he stammered, at last.
“Oh, that is my secret,” replied the wise old Hare. “I know how to do a great many things which would surprise you. But the question is, do you want to go back there?”
Wang Chih shook his head.
“Then close the window. It is the window of the Present. And look through the other, which is the window of the Past.”
Wang Chih obeyed, and through this window he saw his own dear little village, and his wife, and Han Chung and Ho-Seen-Ko jumping about her as she hung up the colored lanterns outside the door.
“Father won’t be in time to light them for us, after all,” Han Chung was saying.