Before they had gone far they found a cart stuck in the mud. The owner and his wife—the latter looking very comical with her tiny crippled feet and black trousers—stood helplessly beside it.
'Noble brothers,' the man called out to the approaching travellers, 'your dog of a servant implores you to assist him to move his cart.'
'He wants us to help him get his cart out of that hole,' Ping Wang said to the Pages, in an undertone. 'Shall we?'
'Certainly,' Charlie answered.
Charlie, Fred, and Ping Wang walked up to the cart, and putting forth all their strength moved it, at the first attempt, out of the rut in which it had stuck. The Chinaman thanked them profusely for their help. His wife said nothing, but stared at Charlie in a way that made him feel quite uncomfortable. He was much relieved when, in obedience to her husband's call to come and take her seat, she toddled off towards the vehicle.
'It's a wonder,' Charlie whispered to Fred, 'that she doesn't fall on her nose. If she did it would not spoil it, for it's flat already. Hallo, what's Ping Wang saying to the old man?'
In a few moments they knew. Ping Wang came over to them, and said, quietly, 'These people are on their way to Kwang-ngan, and they will drive us there for one hundred cash.'
A cash is a copper coin with a square hole in the middle. Its value is about a fifth of an English farthing. These coins are carried strung together, and their value being so small a man can have a heavy load of coppers without being even moderately rich.
'It's cheap,' Fred answered. 'Let us accept.'
Ping Wang therefore informed his noble brother that the sons of dogs would have the pleasure of riding in his magnificent carriage. Before they had travelled far the Pages came to the conclusion that the ride was by no means a cheap one, and that instead of paying to ride they ought to have been paid, so frequently were they called upon to pull or push the cart out of some rut in which it stuck fast. They felt that the wily old Chinaman had made a very good bargain, and if they had been able to speak Chinese they would have told him so. Charlie, however, disliked the woman much more than he did her husband. She stared at him almost continuously while they were on the cart, and when he was in the road helping to get the vehicle out of a rut, he could see her still peeping out at him. When the cart had stuck in the mud for the tenth time in half an hour, Charlie whispered to Fred, as they were extricating it, 'I have had enough of this. Let's walk.'