“Hey, Sing Lung!” he called. “Come here a minute, will you? You have visitors.” Sing Lung, his face wreathed in an expansive smile, shuffled forward. “Hillo,” he greeted them genially. “How you? Nice day?” “Keep him talking a while,” Teddy said in a low voice to Roy. “I’ll get his fiddle.” “Sing Lung, this is Miss Carew, and this is Miss Willis. They are staying at the 8 X 8,” explained Roy. “Glad to see you.” The cook smiled and extended his two clasped hands in the oriental welcome. “You velly pletty--almost pletty like Belle Ada,” and he grinned widely. To his mind few girls had reached Belle’s perfection of beauty. “Thanks,” Nell answered, blushing a little. It was a new experience to be complimented with a reservation in favor of another’s beauty. “Sing Lung, tell the ladies what you give the punchers for mess,” Mr. Manley said, with a wink to the cook. “Mice,” Sing Lung declared, nodding his head. “Little white mice, velly tendle; bleckfast, dinna, suppa! Yep! Me catchee! You like I makie you mice stew? Maybe mice flied?” “Heavens, no!” Ethel said, with a shudder. “Mr. Manley, I think that’s _terrible_! Do the men really _like_ to eat mice?” Belle and Roy could hold in no longer. They exploded into a hearty laugh. Nell and Ethel saw the joke immediately, and could not refrain from laughing too. “I think you’re mean to tease us,” Ethel exclaimed, pouting in mock anger. “We are awfully green, aren’t we? I might have known you were only fooling!” “Never mind,” Belle consoled the Eastern girls. “If you stay out here long enough, you’ll be a real Westerner. Then you can go back to New York and ride a horse down Broadway.” At this moment Teddy returned with a black box. “Here, Sing Lung,” he said, thrusting it toward the Chinese cook. “Give us a tune, won’t you? The girls have heard, all the way back in New York, what a player you are.” “Me not so good,” and the cook grinned modestly, eyeing the box enviously, however. “Sure you are!” Roy declared. “You play, Sing Lung, and then we’ll leave it to the girls. Hey?” “Oh, please, Sing Lung!” coaxed Belle Ada. “Well--” the cook hesitated, but it was plain to be seen that he was more than willing to oblige. Teddy at last settled the question by forcing the box into the cook’s hands. With a look of almost reverence on his face, Sing Lung opened the box--and, as he did so, there sprang from it a mouse! With a yell, the cook dropped the case and dashed into the mess-house, from which there immediately issued an explosion of high-fire Cantonese. The two girls, who had looked at the little rodent with simple curiosity and with none of the fright which members of the feminine sex are supposed to exhibit on such occasions, laughed merrily at the strange spectacle of a Chinese running from a mouse.