ive. "You have come on a long and
winding path; have you taken your rice?"

"Nothing remains lacking," replied Chang Tao, his eyes again
elsewhere. "Command your slave, Excellence."

"In what particular direction do your agreeable powers of
leisure-beguiling extend?"

So far Chang Tao had left the full consideration of this inevitable
detail to the inspiration of the moment, but when the moment came the
prompting spirits did not disclose themselves. His hesitation became
more elaborate under the expression of gathering enlightenment that
began to appear in Melodious Vision's eyes.

"An indifferent store of badly sung ballads," he was constrained to
reply at length, "and--perchance--a threadbare assortment of involved
questions and replies."

"Was it your harmonious voice that we were privileged to hear raised
beneath our ill-fitting window a brief space ago?" inquired Shen Yi.

"Admittedly at the sight of this noble palace I was impelled to put my
presumptuous gladness into song."

"Then let it fain be the other thing," interposed the maiden, with
decision. "Your gladness came to a sad end, minstrel."

"Involved questions are by no means void of divertisement," remarked
Shen Yi, with conciliatory mildness in his voice. "There was one,
turning on the contradictory nature of a door which under favourable
conditions was indistinguishable from an earthenware vessel, that
seldom failed to baffle the unalert in the days before the binding of
this person's hair."

"That was the one which it had been my feeble intention to propound,"
confessed Chang Tao.

"Doubtless there are many others equally enticing," suggested Shen Yi
helpfully.

"Alas," admitted Chang Tao with conscious humiliation; "of all those
wherein I retain an adequate grasp of the solution, the complication
eludes me at the moment, and thus in a like but converse manner with
the others."

"Esteemed parent," remarked Melodious Vision, without emotion, "this
is neither a minstrel nor one in any way entertaining. It is merely
Another."

"Another!" exclaimed Chang Tao in refined bitterness. "Is it possible
that after taking so extreme and unorthodox a course as to ignore the
Usages and advance myself in person I am to find that I have not even
the mediocre originality of being the first, as a recommendation?"

"If the matter is thus and thus, so far from being the first, you are
only the last of a considerable line of worthy and enterprising youths