u are not following me!'

Chang told that he could not very well do so until she was higher still.

Chang Nai-nai, who was very determined and not lacking in courage,
resolutely went up a little higher. She was now more than half way to
the top, and there she stuck, seized by a sudden terror. She looked very
funny, clinging with both hands to the ladder, and her little claw-like
feet close together on one of the rungs. Chang could not help smiling,
which greatly annoyed the poor woman, and she at once began a tirade
against the foolishness of An Ching. Why could she not talk with a
grey-headed old man (Chang had about six grey hairs) who might have been
a grandfather had their little baby girl lived and been married at
sixteen, as she herself was? 'I won't have anything to do with helping
the children to get home to their parents, no matter what the reward may
be, if I am obliged to climb ladders and talk with ridiculous young
women,' she went on.

'Come down, then,' said Chang.

But this was more than could be expected of her. As we all know from
experience, especially girls who have got so far as climbing into a
hay-loft, it is very much easier to go up a ladder than to come down.
Chang Nai-nai might have remained where she was until she dropped off,
had not Chang mounted after her and almost carried her down.

When the little woman was safely deposited on the ground, she became
less irate against An Ching.

'What can be done?' she said. 'The young woman is in the right, but
mount that ladder again I will not. If she can find a ladder and climb
up on her side, let her do so. If she can't, as she is trying to help a
foreigner, she might adopt the foreign custom of talking to any one.
You can go up again and tell the children what I say. When she knows
what I've suffered on that ladder she will give in, I think.'

So Chang mounted once more and told the children, who had heard a good
deal of the talk, about Chang Nai-nai's efforts to converse with An
Ching. They both went to try and persuade her to come, and found her in
her own room. She finally consented, and, half dragged by the children,
appeared through the round hole. Chang, who was still at his post, took
away all An Ching's embarrassment by greeting her with:

'Is the young Ku Nai-nai well?'

Then, after a few more formalities, he asked Little Yi to go and stand
in the round gateway, so as to be able to warn them if any one came, and
he began at once t