"We spent a day at the Great Wall. We scrambled over the ruins and climbed to the top of one of the towers, and we had more than one tumble among the remains of the great enterprise of twenty centuries ago. Then we started back to Pekin, and returned with aching limbs and a general feeling that we had had a hard journey. But we were well satisfied that we had been there, and would not have missed seeing the Great Wall for twice the fatigue and trouble. They told us in Pekin that some travellers have been imposed on by seeing only a piece of a wall about thirty miles from the city, which the guides pretend is the real one. They didn't try the trick on us, and probably thought it would not be of any use to do so.No clocks, no pictures on the walls, no mirrors; in fact, the room was quite bare of ornament.
I asked where Ferry was now. Her eyes refilled--they were red from earlier distresses--and she motioned across the hall: "The captain of the Louisianians, you know, has sent for him!"Thanks. Now I wont occupy your time more than I can help. I have come to consult you about the County Hospital, of which, as you know, I am chairman. We have a meeting in half an hour from now, the notice of which, by some mistake, never reached me till this morning. Thats my excuse for descending on you like this.{73}At one point our way sloped down to a ramshackle wooden bridge that spanned a narrow bit of running water at the edge of a wood. Beyond it the road led out between two fields whose high worm-fences made it a broad lane. The farther limit of this sea of sunlight was the grove that hid the Sessions house on the left; on the right it was the woods-pasture in which lay concealed a lily-pond. As Gholson and I crossed the bridge we came upon a most enlivening view of our own procession out in the noonday blaze before us; the Sessions buggy; then Charlotte' little wagon; next the Sessions family carriage full of youngsters; and lastly, on their horses, Squire Sessions--tall, fleshy, clean-shaven, silver-haired--and Ned Ferry. Mrs. Sessions and Miss Harper, in the buggy, were just going by a big white gate in the right-hand fence, through which a private way led eastward to the lily-pond. A happy sight they were, the children in the rear vehicle waving handkerchiefs back at us, and nothing in the scene made the faintest confession that my pet song, which I was again humming, was pat to the hour:"Gamages," interrupted the Clockwork man, "waitI seem to understandit comes back to meuniversal providerscash accountnine and ninepencenine and nine[Pg 97]pencenine and ninepenceI beg your pardon."
