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heady days, the Emperor promulgated the reforms but his aunt, the Empress Dowager, and her conservative cronies in the court grew alarmed. The Empress Dowager arrested her nephew and had him locked up in a pavilion in the palace. Then she rounded up and executed the leading reformers, including T’an. A number of their supporters formed an underground anti-Ch’ing movement that blamed the Manchus for China’s woes and believed it was time for China to move, like Japan, to a constitutional monarchy or even a republic.
    Morrison had been enthusiastic about the reform movement. He had once even offered to help one of the reformers, an offer that had been turned down, most unfortunately as it turned out, as two years later the man was put to death.
    Morrison looked back with renewed interest at the girlsweeping his courtyard. He noticed then that her feet, whilst small, had only been loosely bound. ‘I do indeed know who T’an was,’ he told Kuan, drawing a forefinger across his throat.
    Kuan nodded, glancing nervously at the girl.
    ‘Her father—was he executed, too?’
    ‘He ran away. Then my parents died and I was taken to the orphanage. I never saw her again. She was young then.’ He looked pained. ‘Just a girl.’
    ‘She still looks young to me. What’s her name?’
    ‘Yu-ti.’
    Morrison narrowed his eyes in thought. ‘Jade something?’
    ‘No. Not that yu. Means “waiting for little brother”. She was the second child, both girls. You know Chinese families must have boy.’
    ‘So they weren’t that progressive after all.’
    ‘This is China.’
    ‘It certainly is.’ They both watched as Yu-ti, having finished her sweeping, scampered back into the house. ‘What do you think of the reformers, Kuan?’
    ‘They are China’s hope,’ he replied fervently. ‘Unless we make our country strong, we will always be victims of foreign powers.’ As though catching himself saying something he should not, he bit his lip.
    ‘Do go on,’ Morrison urged. For all his complaints about Granger reporting the gossip of Chinese cart drivers, Morrison had always been professionally interested in the opinions of his Head Boy. But Kuan seemed reluctant to continue the conversation. That was fine, for Morrison had correspondence and other tasks waiting for him. He gave Kuan a few instructions, then stood alone in his courtyard, collecting his thoughts.
    Two white kittens belonging to his servants came mewing and tumbling in together on the neat brick paving, the bells around their necks jingling. From his cage, Cook’s songbird observed their antics warily, cocking his head first in this direction, then that. Morrison felt for the handkerchief in his pocket and stroked it with his fingers. He took a deep breath, almost a sigh. Where was she now? he wondered. Was she thinking of him, too? His chest filled with longing.
    Morrison’s library was narrow and high-ceilinged, a place of repose, order and scholarship. On the shelves, in addition to twenty thousand books in more than twenty languages, lay at least four hundred early manuscript dictionaries and grammars, four thousand pamphlets and two thousand maps and engravings, each one meticulously catalogued. Of all his collections, which included bibelots, silks and jade, Morrison cherished none as much as his books. He loved the written word for the way it secured thoughts and experiences, lending them structure, preventing them from passing out of sight and memory.
    Morrison’s greatest regret was that for all his accomplishments, he was not, he knew, a great writer. He had published a book and a good many reports and telegrams. But when he thought of poets and writers he admired, he felt humble—and not many things humbled Morrison—for great authors, like Kipling, his favourite, gave moral sense to the world. It was not just facility with language or even a rich imagination, he knew, that made an author great, but the way the writer reached for and honoured the