"Them," said Billings in devilish questionable grammar, pointing to the table. "They are pajamas, you know." "Ha!" ejaculated the professor, holding them up. "So they are. You are very observing, sir, very. Now, I had not noticed that at all; I was so interested in the material itself--the wonderful silk of Si-Ling-Chi, gentlemen. Ha! Indeed a rare privilege!" By Jove! He stroked the stuff lightly, tenderly--as one likes to do a little child's hair, don't you know. "Beautiful, beautiful fabric," he sighed half to himself. "Only once before have I seen a piece of it--but it was enough; I could never, never forget." Something like a groan escaped him. Billings angled his head toward me and tightly compressed one eye. "H'm! Something in the petticoat line--eh, Professor?" The professor's face wrinkled with the most matter-of-fact surprise. "Petticoat?" he piped querulously. "You are forgetting that the petticoat is a vestment unknown in China." "Oh, in China! I was thinking of Paree," chuckled Billings, with a gay air and another glance at me. Then his nerve withered under the professor's blank stare, and he added hurriedly: "H'm! So it was in China you saw the other piece of silk?" The professor sighed profoundly. His reply came dreamily, regretfully: "In the Purple Forbidden City; but I was not quick enough." "Not quick enough?" Billings' echo was solicitous, sympathetic. "It was among the palace treasures, the imperial properties--things unhappily lost to the world and civilization. Ah, gentlemen, I erred; I committed a fatal mistake; it has been a matter of deep mortification to me often!" His head wagged somberly. Billings looked a little embarrassed and rubbed his chin. "H'm!" he coughed. "I guess we all slip a cog now and then. I know I've done things myself I've been rather ash--" "I erred, gentlemen," went on the professor, "in trusting most unscientifically to the false principle that the hand is quicker than the eye. It is _not_ true, for one of the guards saw me and my carelessness cost me dearly: I not only lost the silk, but a singularly beautiful gold thread altar cloth and a matchless amulet of _yu-chi jade_, you know--white jade, at that, gentlemen, I assure you--a rare bit of carving of the second century--real Khoton jade, too--no base _fei-tsui_. But, alas! I lost them, my friends; they confiscated them, and no doubt they are still there in their original places from which I had--a--attached them. Do you wonder at my mortification? And then the sacrifice of a whole year of planning, watching, bribing and perfecting of preliminary disguise! All fruitless, fruitless!" The professor lifted and dropped his palms in eloquent deprecation. Billings' foot pressed mine. "Now, wouldn't that frost you?" he whispered under his breath. Aloud he exclaimed indignantly: "Beastly outrage; it must have been painful." The professor started in the act of lifting the pajamas again.