Two or three of the gentlemen sat near him, and I caught at times scraps of their conversation across the room. At first I could not make much sense of what I heard; for the discourse of Louisa Eshton and Mary Ingram, who sat nearer to me, confused the fragmentary sentences that reached me at intervals.

While every leaf that His plumes touch / Saith His Name audibly.

I misheard when she asked for mints, and gave her mince instead.

…villages in Hong'an County, Hubei had expended nearly 200,000 yuan in 1983 for making clan dragon-lanterns (xingshi longdeng).