husband. His name was Hung Li, as Nelly soon found out by his mother
screaming all sorts of directions at him, when he began to pack the
carts. Boxes and bundles and food for the journey were put in, and the
children began to understand that they were to be taken to Yung Ching
with Hung Li, his wife and mother. However, they had been so much
comforted by learning, through the talk with the barber, that they
really were to be given back to their parents, that going to Yung Ching
at first did not seem to matter much, especially as they had no idea
where Yung Ching was. There was no putting on of cloaks and hats, the
Chinese not using these articles.

An Ching and the children were in one cart, which was driven by a
carter, while Ku Nai-nai occupied the other with her son as driver.
The cart was most uncomfortable; it looked like a large arched
travelling-trunk, covered with dark blue cotton. Open at one end, it was
placed between two heavy wooden wheels, and had a square board in front,
from which the shafts stuck out. It was on the side of this board that
the driver sat, and the others were inside under the covering, sitting
flat on the bottom of the cart, for there was no seat.

It was a fine, bright, breezy April day. As the cart jumped and jolted
over the lumpy, unpaved road, Nelly could not see outside at all, for
the carter had pulled down the curtain, with its square piece of gauze
for a window, and besides, there were such clouds of dust that when she
tried to look through the gauze she could not tell where they were.
Little Yi fixed her eye to a tiny hole she had found in the blue cotton.
She noticed that they passed the American Legation, but after that the
road was quite strange to her, as she had never been far from home.

The carters were yelling to their mules and the street hawkers were
crying their wares, but above their noise the children could hear the
humming of birds' whistles overhead. The Chinese tie whistles under
pigeons' wings, and when the birds fly they make a strange kind of
humming or whistling noise. Nelly thought they must be the pigeons that
often flew over the Legation compound, and belonged to a mandarin who
lived not far away. The birds seemed to Nelly to hover about the carts
for some time; but at last they evidently remembered that it was the
hour for them to feed, and they turned round and flew home.

About noon the travellers reached the great, high wall that stands all
round the