of the room, for
it certainly is the only corner in a Japanese house which is secured
from draughts. But perhaps it was respect for invisible spirits which
drove the sleeper eventually to abandon his coign of vantage to the
service of aesthetic beauty, and to stretch himself on the open floor.

To Asako the rooms seemed all the same. Each gave the same impression
of spotlessness and nudity. Each was stiffly rectangular like the
honey squares fitted into a hive. Above all, there was nothing about
any of them to indicate their individual use, or the character of
the person to whom they were specially assigned. No dining-room, or
drawing-room, or library.

"Where is your bedroom?" asked Asako, with a frank demand for that
sign of sisterhood among Western girls; "I should so like to see it."

"I generally sleep," answered the Japanese girl, "in that room at the
corner where we have been already, where the bamboo pictures are. This
is the room where father and mother sleep."

They were standing on the balcony outside the apartment where Asako
had first been received.

"But where are the beds?" she asked.

Sadako went to the end of the balcony, and threw open a big cupboard
concealed in the outside of the house. It was full of layers of rugs,
thick, dark and wadded.

"These are the beds," smiled the Japanese cousin. "My brother Takeshi
has a foreign bed in his room; but my father does not like them, or
foreign clothes, or foreign food, or anything foreign. He says
the Japanese things are best for the Japanese. But he is very
old-fashioned."

"Japanese style looks nicer," said Asako, thinking how big and vulgar
a bedstead would appear in that clean emptiness and how awkwardly its
iron legs would trample on the straw matting; "but isn't it draughty
and uncomfortable?"

"I like the foreign beds best," said Sadako; "my brother has let me
try his. It is very soft."

So in this country of Asako's fathers, a bedstead was lent for trial
as though it had been some fascinating novelty, a bicycle or a piano.

The kitchen appealed most to the visitor. It was the only room to her
mind which had any individuality of its own. It was large, dark and
high, full of servant-girls scuttering about like little mice, who
bowed and then fled when the two ladies came in. The stoves for
boiling the rice interested Asako, round iron receptacles like
coppers, each resting on a brick fireplace. Everything was explained
to her: the high dr