Her natural enthusiasm and kindliness of disposition made her generally loved, however; while, despite her immense wealth and influence, no woman's life had a truer and deeper purpose. She was always ready to sympathize with and help her suffering sisters, whatever their shortcomings might have been, or whatever the means she was obliged to resort to in order to render them the smallest assistance. She reconciled all her little plots, intrigues, and deceptions to herself by saying: "Surely it is better for him not to know everything; he knows too much already, what with his Siamese and his English and his Pali and his Sanscrit. I wonder he can ever get to sleep at all with so many different tongues in his head." It was after school that I accompanied one of my most promising pupils, the Princess Somawati, one of Thieng's daughters, to her mother's house. Being the head of the royal cuisine, Thieng had two houses. One was her home, where her children were born and brought up,--a quaint, stately edifice with stuccoed fronts, situated in the ladies' or fashionable part of the inner city, and in the midst of a pleasant garden. In the other, adjoining the royal kitchen, she spent the greater part of each day in selecting, overlooking, and sometimes preparing with her own fair hands many of the costly dainties that were destined to grace the royal table. Thieng received me with her usual bright, pleasant smile and hearty embrace; to give me the latter, she put down her youngest baby, a boy about two years old, to whom I had, during my repeated visits to her house, taught a number of little English rhymes and sentences, and who always accosted me with, "Mam, mam, how do do?" or "Mam, make a bow, make a bow"; while he bobbed his own little head, and blinked his bright eyes at me, to the infinite delight of his mother and her handmaids. Little "Chai" settled himself in my lap, as usual, and the host of women, like children eager to be amused, gathered around to listen to our baby-talk; and great was the general uproar when Chai would mimic me in singing scraps of baby-songs, or thrust an orange into my mouth, or put on my hat and cloak to promenade the chamber, and say "How do do?" like a veritable Englishman; then his fond mother, in ecstasies of joy, would snatch him to her arms and cover him with kisses, and the delighted spectators would whisper that that boy was as clever as his father, and must surely come to the throne some day or other. In the midst of these fascinating employments one of the lady-physicians was announced. Thieng retired at once with her into an inner chamber, carrying her beloved Chai in her arms, and beckoning me to follow her. Here she consigned Chai to me for further instruction in English, and laid herself down to be shampooed. I felt that now was my opportunity; but I waited a little in order to make sure whether the doctor was to be trusted.