"It isn't fair," said Nasmith in a comforting voice; "you ought to have your revenge and see us eating Chinese food."
"Do you always eat Chinese food?" inquired Patricia incredulously. "Don't you ever get tired of it?"
"What a question from Pat, of all people," said Elizabeth, "Pat, who's never been known to get tired of eating any food."
Patricia gulped at the bait indignantly, but the situation was saved for Nancy. In the good-tempered wrangling which ensued she could lay down her spoon unobserved and wait calmly for the meal to end. She soon found herself enjoying the retorts bandied back and forth by the Ferris children. The wordy battle reminded her of the three-cornered warfare between Li-an, Edward, and herself. She began to feel immensely at home and rose from the table quite in a mood to learn the games her new friends wished to teach her. She enjoyed draughts and dominoes and smiled at Beresford's droll stories. Nothing, however, quite surpassed the effect of the gramophone, which she listened to as she swung with Elizabeth and Helen in a capacious hammock under the trees. She had heard of these marvelous instruments but Herrick, who hated them, would not permit one within the walls of his home. Amid their host of new impressions the girl and her brother equally could spare wonder for these black discs which sang with such unbelievably human tones. They pictured enviously the sensation they could make by introducing this miraculous toy into the gossiping perfunctory life of the courtyards at home.
So full was the evening, so engaged were Nancy and Edward by their new friends, that Mrs. Ferris had not the heart to call "Bedtime" till every record had been heard; she even let Elizabeth and Helen perform their respective show-pieces on the piano and combine forces for a militant duet, and at last suggested sleep only when Patricia and David's rendering of "Turkey in the Straw" promised to continue interminably and without variation through the night.
She had dug up pyjamas for Edward and a nightgown for Nancy, and now put the boy in charge of David while the twins carried off Nancy like a prize to their own room, offering one bed to their guest and preparing to share the other.
Nancy looked with speechless amazement round the clean white room. Its daintiness, its comfort, were beyond her experience. She gazed at the spotless beds and at the long mirror of the dressing table, and at the bottles, hairbrushes, combs, and hairpin trays arrayed before it. Helen and Elizabeth were delighted by her surprise, overjoyed to explain the uses of every toilet implement. In their turn they wished to be satisfied about every detail of Nancy's clothes, so the three were soon busy comparing the odd features of Western and Chinese garments.
Dressing, Nancy decided, must be an elaborate process in the West. She watched Helen and Elizabeth disrobe with the attention she would have given to a play—with more attention, indeed, for she was privileged to test the fabrics with her sensitive fingers, rubbing her hands up and down their white silk stockings, examining the embroidery which it seemed so strange to her they should conceal on their underwear, looking minutely at the lace straps over their shoulders, the pink ribbons which held up their chemises, the elastic girdles from which their garters were hung.
Nancy was bewildered by such a complexity of garb. She was ashamed to be dressed so simply, to have nothing startling to disclose, just jacket and trousers, singlet and drawers, and then the diamond-shaped piece of cloth fastened by strings across the front of her body as a guard against cholera. There were no ribbons, no lace, no embroidery, not even the gay sash she wore in the privacy of the garden at home when she could rid herself of her outer garments, nothing but severely cut, practical things of plain cotton cloth, with just one touch of color in the orange garters, the dividing line between her sober black stockings and the white skin above. Yet the two girls envied her and sighed to exchange their frills for the convenience of her Chinese clothing.
"We are not dressed up like this usually," explained Helen, "only for dinner. We wear gingham in the day-time, but we still have the skirts to pull down and the stockings eternally to pull up, and we never could get ready in twice the time it takes you."