bout since I have been out here,
trying to find something as rare, unique and full of surprises
for your friends as your cigars have been for mine. I have
found it."

"And devilish handsome of him, Jenkins, eh?" I commented gratefully; and
I looked with renewed interest at the little roll in my hand. Jove, how
I wished, though, he would come to the point and say what it was!

"You know what a curiously upside-down people the Chinese are.
Example, they begin dinner with desert and end with soup; they
drink hot, acid beverages in summer instead of iced ones; they
write from right to left, vertically, while we write from left
to right, horizontally; they mourn in white instead of black,
and they are awfully honest and pay their debts.

"But there is one other point of difference still queerer: they
wear pajamas all day, while we wear them only at night."

Here I yawned. Always hate that heavy, historical, instructive stuff,
you know. If you have to hear it, gives you headache, unless you can
slip off to sleep first.

So I reached the letter up to Jenkins.

"Just run over the rest of it yourself, and see if he says anything
about his present," I said, settling comfortably. Clever idea of mine,
don't you think?

And I was just dropping my head to have a snug little nap--just a little
forty, you know--when, dash me, if I didn't have another idea! Awfully
annoying, time like that.

Mind is so devilish alert, dash it! Always doing things like that; can't
seem to get over it, you know. And this ripping idea that bobbed up now
and got me all roused up was nothing more or less than to untie the
string myself and see what the thing was. See?

"I believe, sir," said Jenkins, looking up, "the gentleman has sent
you--h'm--has sent you--"

"By Jove, a suit of pajamas!" I exclaimed, holding them up.

It was neck and neck, but I beat Jenkins to it, after all!

"Gentleman says, sir," continued Jenkins, studying the letter, "that his
present of a pair of pajamas may seem surprising, but you won't know how
surprising until you have worn them."

"Jolly likely," I admitted, feeling the silk. By Jove, it was the
finest, yet thinnest stuff I ever saw, soft as rose leaves and as filmy
light as a spider's web. Not bad, that, for a comparison, eh? Caught the
idea from a vase of full-blown roses that were beginning to shed their
petals there on the table. And on one of the bloss