By the time that Nelly and Little Yi had been at Yung Ching a month, Nelly and An Ching had become great friends. Poor Nelly would have been very miserable but for An Ching, who used to cheer her by constantly talking about Mr. and Mrs. Grey and when Nelly would be back in Peking. And An Ching used to tell Nelly about her own childhood, which must have been very dull, Nelly thought; her marriage to Hung Li when she had seen him only twice, and how she was carried in a red chair from her parents' house to Ku Nai-nai's. She told Nelly that Hung Li was very greedy, and would do anything for money. It was he who prevented his mother from taking the children home the evening they left the Legation, as she at first fully intended to do; but Ku Nai-nai was herself rather fond of money, and did not require much persuasion. An Ching taught Nelly to sew backwards in Chinese fashion, using a thimble without an end, like a thick ring, on her finger; and she cut out and helped her to make a little blue cotton coat which they thought would fit Baby Buckle. Nelly used to kiss and pat that little coat, and loved it quite as much as any doll she had ever had. In return Nelly taught An Ching to knit, with some chopsticks, which they pointed at the ends, for needles. The children were rarely allowed to go outside the Kus' compound, and never alone, but they could play out of doors as much as they wished. The larger court had the houses or set of rooms in it, and there was a smaller court which was entered through a queer gateway just like a large round hole in the wall. This court was at the side of Ku Nai-nai's rooms, and had no windows looking into it. An Ching, Nelly, and Little Yi used often to go and sit there with their work, and the children sometimes played at jumping through the hole. They saw no one but the Kus and their servant. Even when the barber came to shave Hung Li's head they were shut up out of sight, and their hair was kept short with Ku Nai-nai's scissors. Little Yi was becoming almost reconciled to life in Yung Ching, for although she was fond of her parents, she did not love them as Nelly did hers. She missed the large compound of the British Legation, and would have been very pleased to know at any moment that she was to be sent home. But she ate, slept, and was just as contented all day long as she had always been. But Nelly, poor child, was no longer the merry little hopping and skipping creature she had been in Peking. She never had a fit of the giggles now, and she was thin and pale; still, she was not absolutely miserable, for she felt sure she was going to leave Yung Ching soon, especially after she overheard a conversation which took place in Ku Nai-nai's room one night after she and Little Yi were in bed. Hung Li began by telling Ku Nai-nai he had been cheated out of some money by a man with whom he had done business that day; and he added: