plumed hat—those in the van of red coral, the others of sapphire and lapis lazuli, rock crystal, white stone and gold.     

       One by one the lesser chairs were brought out on the hulk and opened. From the first stepped a stout woman of mature years, richly clad in heavily embroidered silks, with loops of pearls about her neck and shoulders, and with painted face under the elaborately built-up head-dress. Other women of various' ages followed, less conspicuously clad. From the last chair appeared a young woman, slim and graceful even in enveloping silks, her face, like the others, a mask of white paint and rouge, with lips carmined into a perfect cupid's bow. And with her, clutching her hand, was a little girl of six or seven, who laughed merrily upward at the great steamer as she trotted along.     

       Blue-clad servants followed, a hundred or more, and swarming cackling women with unpainted faces and flapping black trousers, and porters—long lines of porters—with boxes and bales and bundles swung from the inevitable bamboo poles.     

       At last they were all aboard, and the steamer moved out.     

       “Who were all those women, in the chairs, do you suppose?” asked Miss Andrews.     

       “His wives, probably.”      

       “Oh....!”      

       “Or concubines.”      

       Miss Andrews was silent. She could still see the waving crowd on the wharf, and the banners and kites.     

       “He must be at least a prince, with all that retinue.”      

       Miss Andrews, thinking rapidly of Aladdin and Marco Polo, of wives and concubines and strange barbarous ways, brought herself to say in a nearly matter-of-fact voice: “But those women all had natural feet. I don't understand.”      

       Miss Means reached for her Things Chinese; looked up “Feet,”      

       “Women,”      

       “Dress,” and other headings; finally found an answer, through a happy       

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