A strange thing happened up in my room; I opened one of my books just at the page where it tells about the Chinese ambassadors, on the occasion of their visits to Christian countries, noticing with grave disapproval the décollete costumes of the women at the state functions. What wonder!--if they looked anything like the women at my aunt's dinner party!
Señor de Bobadilla says that I am making remarkable progress with my Spanish songs; he tells grandmother in a half-whisper, as if fearing to let me hear him, that I am very bright and intelligent; he congratulated her on having such a prodigy for a grandchild. Oh, cunning Señor de Bobadilla, you want to continue my lessons indefinitely. I am learning to quiver and shake, and trill, run up the scale, and down the scale, jump from a note away down low to a note away up high. I'll soon be able to sing "Lead me to the Light," as well as the church choir.
The professor looks very Spanish in brown velvet coat, red necktie, shoes shining like a looking-glass, a moustache waxed into long points on each side of his top lip, and hair hanging in a curling brown mat down to his shoulders. Seated at the piano, his thin yellow fingers sprawl over the white and black ivory keys, while in response to my efforts he keeps ejaculating, "Goot! Goot! _Excellent! Superb!_"
I, dressed in muslin, cream-coloured ground dashed over with wild roses, or blue ground with white chrysanthemums (the latter is not very becoming to my yellow skin) stand at his left hand stretching my mouth to the utmost, trying to give utterance to the tones he is striking on the piano, and trying to look Spanish, too.
Señor de la Prisa is teaching me the Spanish language--a lesson every day, and I am beginning to jabber the strange gibberish like a parrot: "_Es un dia bonita. El viento es frio. Se esta haciendo tarde. Es temprano._" I'll soon believe myself that I am _really_ Spanish, and have never come from "the country of yellow gods and green dragons," as Uncle Theodore calls my dear native land.
I have been watching people, reading the daily newspapers and my Chinese books, and asking grandmother questions until I feel very wise. I am almost as wise as a real American now.