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51 

Thursday, 6 August 
By getting to the train early we got a good corner, with room enough for one of us lie down and the other to sit in comfort. We took turns sleeping, for our baggages were many, and the stops were often. But in the morning we arrived safely and made our way to the house in a rattling closed carriage piled with luggage fore and aft. The house was there when we arrived, but as our father had neglected to inform the servants of our impending arrival when he went through Nanking last week, they were just a bit taken by surprise. However, they come through nobly, and for two days supplied us with baths and Chinese food, while we loafed, had some washing done, repacked our kits, and generally enjoyed ourselves by ourselves. If the boat left on Thursday night and midnight, it should arrive in Nanking Saturday morning, at almost any hour. The rain made the weather cool and pleasant. 

Saturday, 8 August

The boat might get in early so it behooved us to be early at the wharf. We were. Before seven o'clock our carriage had drawn up in front of the company's office on the Bund. The manager had not yet arisen, but a coolie sweeping out the place assured both Ch'ensie, the old servant who had come down with us, and Dorothy, that the Ningshao would not come in until tomorrow. Whether it was true or not we could not then ascertain, but we could not wait in the carriage. So after much discussion we finally allowed our baggage to be transferred up a rickety staircase, through a dark hallway, to a fine room with a balcony overlooking the street in a hotel that called itself [[underline]] Number One [[/Underlined]]. The room was well furnished with a bed srrounded by an air-proof muslin mosquito curtain, two tables, a dressing table, four chairs whose backs rendered them fit for decoration only, and a long wicker chair on the headboard of which the grease of several generations of queues still lingered. The view out over the broad yellow Yangste to the blue P'uchen hills was gorgeous, but we could not see it for the mat shed flung out over the street. On the ropes which operated the ventilating screens of this shed the flies clustered so thickly that hanging bits looked like well filled pussy-willow branches. They were quiet