The grounds around the palace were beautiful. Owney heeled off behind Yellow Kimono through a series of gardens, each with its own pool, and each pool surrounded by pebble borders and tiny, gnarled trees that looked like the shrunken children of the tall pines in the outer park.

The palace lifted it soiled and gleaming sides to winged rooftops that looked ready to fly away. And Owney followed Yellow Kimono down a long corridor whose sides were made of decorated paper and swaying grass screens.

Yellow Kimono came to a door, which he opened, and Owney sidled in behind him. The man fell to his knees and crawled across a lake of floor. He placed Owney's papers on a toy table no more than six inches high. Then he crawled out backward, making damp marks in the floor polish.

Owney was alone.

Almost, that is. He was alone with a boy in a short, white robe seated on a gold and black chair, a throne, a boy who was the Emperor of Japan.

"Well, scree and screegooga," breathed Gib in wonder. "How old was he?"

"Say, fourteen," said the dog.

"Fourteen," said Gib.

"About as tall as you," continued Owney, "with a shy smile."

The Emperor bounced off his throne. He ran lightly across the room, put out his hand and patted the dog gently.

"Hello, little dog," he said. He paused and tinkered with his voice. "The Englishmen who taught me your language told me that I might have difficulty with the L's. No matter. He may have told me a lie.

"My, my, look at all the medals! Names of United States cities. Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake City. May I have one to keep? I have a gift for you too. It's a royal passport with the Great Japan Crest. Good anywhere in the country. Sssssss###!"

"He was a fine boy," said Owney. "He fed me fish balls with a delicious sauce. We walked around his gardens. Some of them he made himself. He showed me his prize goldfish, big, shiny ones with popping eyes and great sails of fins and tails. Their eyes were slanty. He lay on his stomach by the pools and fed them from his hand. He got a ball and we played catch. I did tricks for him because I liked him."

"What kind of tricks?" asked Gib.

"Oh, you know. Walked on my forepaws with my rump in the air. Danced on my hind-paws. Played him a song too."

"Some fleep," said Gib. "How?"

"My medals and tags were a lot newer than they are now," explained Owney. "My harness was a lot more limber too. So I shook and jiggled and made music with the medals-oh, jingle medals, jingle medals, jingle all the way!"

Gib laughed until his sides shook and the echoes walked around in the dimness of the Smithsonian.

"The Emperor laughed too," said Owney.

It was a satisfactory day in the Empire of Japan. When dusk came to the gardens paper lanterns were candle-lighted. They were brightly painted paper lanterns and they cast a gay glow. The boy Emperor clapped his hands and a servant brought him a special one. It was a lantern woven of fine bamboo, and inside its open latticework a handful of flying fireflies winked on and off. Their light turned Owney's whiskers green as he sniffed it in appreciation.

"How would you like to spend the night with me?" demanded the Emperor.

Owney barked. He ran to the door, which led to the corridor and whined. He skipped back to the Emperor and looked up at him with both eyes full of questions.

"Let 'em all wait," said the boy. "I may be a little kid, but I run this country."

He flicked a silver hammer with a walnut-sized head against a bronze disk, and waited until the door opened.

Yellow Kimono crept into the room.

"SSSsss###///ss ah toy tee toy ss ah ###," said the Emperor.

Yellow Kimono backed away and vanished into the palace.

Owney and the Emperor dined in a garden under the lanterns. They ate chewy pork in thin strips cooked in pepper oil and chewy beef in thin strips cooked in peanut oil. They ate a partridge apiece with their fingers and paws and jaws. The Emperor of Japan poured gravy into a bowl of paper-thin china for Owney because he did not take tea. And the little dog had sliced marrowbone to ease his teeth from the rich food, while the Emperor munched cookies from a silk bag lifting them carefully so that the sugar wouldn't fall on his robe.

They slept that night on two mats on the floor of the Emperor's bedroom with two wooden blocks for pillows. The Emperor pulled Owney's ears twice during the night because he snored and woke him.

"I said good-bye late the next day," said Owney. "Yellow Kimono took me back to the gatehouse at the palace wall. The American ambassador had gone home. The soldiers and the carriage were there. Yellow Kimono drove me to the American Embassy where the ambassador lived and left me. The ambassador was there and angry. He was so mad he almost barked."

"Why?" asked Gib, puzzled. "Wasn't he pleased because the Emperor liked you?"

"That was why. The Emperor wanted to keep me in Japan. He'd told the ambassador that he'd give the United States its choice of any of the Ryuku Islands for me-or war.

"I was a lot of trouble for the ambassador. He didn't know whether to send for the Navy or go pick out a Ryuku island that President Cleveland might like. He couldn't leave me in Japan. I was the United States representative of the Universal Postal Union. I was also an American citizen."

"Well, what did he do?"

"Mailed me to China," snapped Owney.

Gib giggled.

"I went down to China in a P and O ship, British-owned, with a contract to carry United States mail. The ambassador to Japan sent one of his assistants with me to introduce me to our ambassador to China. I didn't like him. He worried.

"I liked the captain. He wore a white uniform with shiny brushes on his shoulders. He said, 'Haw.' He called me an otter hound. He admired the tags and medals. He said they were too much for his taste in dogs. He said it was very American to send a dog around the world as a representative of the Universal Postal Union. He said, 'Haw.' He said I'd do quite as well as most of the people representing the Crown.

"Yes, I liked him. He invited me into his cabin. He took off my harness and brushed me thoroughly. He clipped my mustache and whiskers to make them neat. He had a man shine my medals for me. He warned me against drinking Chinese water, and told me to watch my diet and to be firm with the Chinese people.

"When we landed at Shanghai he shook my paw good-bye and said he'd pick me up in a week or so for the trip west-maybe all the way to England. He said to 'ware the Oriental."

"What did that mean?"

"It meant to be careful. China was dangerous in those days. Fifteen pounds of dog looked good on any Chinese menu.

"Anyhow, the ambassador to China met me when we landed. I thought it odd, but there weren't any Chinese people with him. At least, no Chinese officials or postal Chinese. There was a German, a Frenchman, two Englishmen and two Russians. One of them had spilled soup on his vest. I couldn't identify the soup. Too many other odors. It would take a bloodhound a hundred years to sniff out every smell in China."

Into Gib's mind came China.

It was a vast land of temples and trouble, and it stretched for weary miles over brown grasslands, bleak deserts and cruel mountains. It was a rich land in the great river valleys, a land of silks and rice and drugs and jewels and perfumes and fine art and lacquered boxes. It was a miserable land where millions starved and millions more died and nobody cared at all why. It was a land of strange customs where nothing was loved more than the old or hated more than the new. It was a land, in the time of Owney's trip, on the edge of wars and battles and bandits, with its Emperor about to lose his throne.

It was a land in which other great nations fought China and each other for special privileges and the wealth, which came from trade. One of those nations was the United States.

"I'm not sure I understand you," said Gib.

"You have pigs around Lindenwold, New Jersey?"

"I live right near a farm," Gib answered.

"Ever see pigs eat dinner, all pushing and shoving and oinking and fighting, each one trying to get more than his share?"

"They're terrible," agreed Gib.

"China was dinner. The pigs were Russia, Germany, France, England and the United States. That's why no Chinese officials were with the ambassador when he met me, and why those other people were. They were all watching each other.

"Now I was and am a very patriotic dog. I realized right away that I was more than a postal inspector and a representative of the Universal Postal Union. I was also a diplomat, a Scotch-Irish terrier, no joke, dog diplomat. If I didn't watch my step I could cause an international incident. Do you know what that is?"

"Do we have them today?" asked Gib.

"All the time," said Owney. "They are commonplace. But in my time an international incident was a crisis, a mighty exciting thing. Governments gathered up their armies, and looked around for all the ships in their navies, and hired spies-all that stuff-and everybody raced around and hollered about war."

"How do international incidents get started?" asked Gib.

"Oh usually it's when somebody or something insults another government and makes it mad enough either to fight or to throw the somebody who insulted it out of the country," said Owney scratching thoughtfully.

Gib had a big suspicion.

"Owney," he asked softly. "Were you an incident?"

The little dog whined.

"Yes and no," he admitted. "I did make China pretty mad at me. But I made the United States, my very own country, just as mad. Both countries parted friends, though. I deserve credit for that too, you know."

"I don't," said Gib. "Tell."