o, her Japanese becoming quite
fluent with the return of her light-heartedness. "Perhaps a joke is
being made. It would be possible to give ten _yen_."

The old curio vender, with the face and spare figure of Julius Caesar,
turned aside from such idle talk with a shrug of hopelessness. He
affected to be more interested in lighting his slender pipe over the
chimney of the lamp which hung suspended over his wares.

"Ten _yen_! Please see!" said Asako, showing a banknote. The merchant
shook his head and puffed. Asako turned away into the stream of
passers-by. She had not gone, ten yards, however, before she felt a
touch on her kimono sleeve. It was Julius Caesar with his curio.

"Indeed, _okusan_, there must be reduction. Thirty _yen_; take it,
please."

He pressed the little box into Asako's hand.

"Twenty _yen_," she bargained, holding out two notes.

"It is loss! It is loss!" he murmured; but he shuffled back to his
stall again, very well content.

"I shall send it to Geoffrey," thought Asako; "it will bring him good
luck. Perhaps he will write to me and thank me. Then I can write to
him."

The New Year is the greatest of Japanese festivals. Japanese of the
middle and lower classes live all the year round in a thickening web
of debt. But during the last days of the year these complications are
supposed to be unraveled and the defaulting debtor must sell some of
his family goods, and start the New Year with a clean slate. These
operations swell the stock-in-trade of the _yomise_.

On New Year's Day the wife prepares the _mochi_ cakes of ground rice,
which are the specialities of the season; and the husband sees to the
erection of his door posts of the two _kadomatsu_ (corner pine trees),
little Christmas trees planted in a coil of rope. Then, attired in his
frock-coat and top hat, if he be a _haikara_ gentleman, or in his best
kimono and _haori_, if he be an old-fashioned Japanese, he goes round
in a rickshaw to pay his complimentary calls, and to exchange _o
medet[=o]_ (respectfully lucky!), the New Year wish. He has presents
for his important patrons, and cards for his less influential
acquaintances. For, as the Japanese proverb says, "Gifts preserve
friendship." At each house, which he visits, he sips a cup of _sake_,
so that his return home is often due to the rickshaw man's assistance,
rather than to his own powers of self-direction. In fact, as Asako's
maid confided to her mistress, "Japanese wife very h