Page:Ernest Bramah - Kai Lungs Golden Hours.djvu/193

 "Was it your harmonious voice that we were privileged to hear raised beneath our ill-fitting window a brief space ago?" inquired Shen Yi.

"Admittedly at the sight of this noble palace I was impelled to put my presumptuous gladness into song." "Then let it fain be the other thing," interposed the maiden, with decision. "Your gladness came to a sad end, minstrel."

"Involved questions are by no means void of divertisement," remarked Shen Yi, with conciliatory mildness in his voice. "There was one, turning on the contradictory nature of a door which under favourable conditions was indistinguishable from an earthenware vessel, that seldom failed to baffle the unalert in the days before the binding of this person's hair."

"That was the one which it had been my feeble intention to propound," confessed Chang Tao.

"Doubtless there are many others equally enticing," suggested Shen Yi helpfully.

"Alas," admitted Chang Tao, with conscious humiliation; "of all those wherein I retain an adequate grasp of the solution, the complication eludes me at the moment, and thus in a like but converse manner with the others."

"Esteemed parent," remarked Melodious Vision, without emotion, "this is neither a minstrel nor one in any way entertaining. It is merely Another." "Another!" exclaimed Chang Tao in refined bitterness. "Is it possible that after taking so extreme and unorthodox a course as to ignore the Usages and advance myself in person I am to find that I have not even the mediocre originality of being the first, as a recommendation?"