orward, where it was obstructed by the pilot-house.

"What have you seen in Bangkok, Miss Blanche, that the absentees have
not seen?" asked Louis, who had seated himself at her side, after
patting Miss Mingo, whom she was holding in her lap.

"A great many things," she replied. "One was the royal barge, which they
said was rowed or paddled by one hundred and fifty men; but a good many
of us did not believe it contained so many."

"I have read about it, though I did not see it. It is said to be one
hundred and fifty feet long, and the book I read said it was paddled by
one hundred and twenty men," added Louis. "But it does not make much
difference, and the books do not agree in regard to a great many things
in this part of the world. What did you think of the people you saw,
Miss Blanche?"

"A lady and gentleman were pointed out to us by one of the kind
missionaries who guided us, and I could hardly tell which was the lady
and which the gentleman till I had studied them a while," returned the
fair maiden. "Both of them wore what appeared to be trousers; but it
proved to be a cloth as big as a sheet wound around the waist, and so
disposed about the legs as to look like trousers; but the garment was
the same on both of them. The lady had something like a shawl, which was
passed over the left shoulder, and under the right arm, with some kind
of a jacket under it. The gentleman wore a sort of tunic, which was
regularly buttoned up in front like a coat. The hair of each was shaved
off close to the head, except a tuft on the crown, which was bunched up.
They wore no ornaments of any kind, perhaps because it was not a dress
occasion. I saw one woman who had a kind of necklace on the top of the
shawl."

"I saw a woman's band of five pieces, and the music they made was not
bad," added Louis.

"I heard a band like that; but I could not tell whether they played a
tune or improvised their music. The missionaries took us into the garden
of a nobleman, where we saw what was called a theatrical exhibition;
but it was no more like a theatre than it was like a cattle-show. We saw
the king too, and he was a nice-looking man forty years old. He had what
looked like a tunnel on his head. He was sitting in a kind of big
arm-chair on poles, and eight men were bearing him to a temple. All the
natives in the street dropped on their knees as he passed, and some lay
flat on their stomachs. That is the way they always do before him. But
he