es from his couch. He is a very small wizened man. Dressed
in his night kimono of light blue silk, he passes along the veranda
in the direction of the morning ablutions. Soon the rending sounds of
throat-clearing show that he has begun his wash. Three maids appear
as by magic in the vacated room. The bed is rolled away, the matting
swept, and the master's morning clothes are laid out ready for him on
his return.

Mrs. Fujinami assists her husband to dress, holding each garment ready
for him to slip into, like a well-trained valet. Mr. Fujinami does not
speak to her. When his belt has been adjusted, and a watch with a gold
fob thrust into its interstice, he steps down from the veranda, slides
his feet into a pair of _geta_, and strolls out into the garden.

Mr. Fujinami's garden is a famous one. It is a temple garden many
centuries old; and the eyes of the initiated may read in the miniature
landscape, in the grouping of shrubs and rocks, in the sudden
glimpses of water, and in the bare pebbly beaches, a whole system of
philosophic and religious thought worked out by the patient priests of
the Ashikaga period, just as the Gothic masons wrote their version of
the Bible history in the architecture of their cathedrals.

But for the ignorant, including its present master, it was just a
perfect little park, with lawns six feet square and ancient pine
trees, with impenetrable forests which one could clear at a bound,
with gorges, waterfalls, arbours for lilliputian philanderings and
a lake round whose tiny shores were represented the Eight Beautiful
Views of the Lake of Biwa near Kyoto.

The bungalow mansion of the family lies on a knoll overlooking the
lake and the garden valley, a rambling construction of brown wood with
grey scale-like tiles, resembling a domesticated dragon stretching
itself in the sun.

Indeed, it is not one house but many, linked together by a number of
corridors and spare rooms. For Mr. and Mrs. Fujinami live in one wing,
their son and his wife in another, and also Mr. Ito, the lawyer, who
is a distant relative and a partner in the Fujinami business. Then,
on the farther side of the house, near the pebble drive and the great
gate, are the swarming quarters of the servants, the rickshaw men, and
Mr. Fujinami's secretaries. Various poor relations exist unobserved
in unfrequented corners; and there is the following of University
students and professional swashbucklers which every important Japanese
i