altogether happier
than it is lawful for a man to be.

The lady of the tea-house insisted upon screening us off from the other
pleasure-parties who were tiffining in the same verandah. She brought
beautiful blue screens with storks on them and slid them into grooves. I
stood it as long as I could. There were peals of laughter in the next
compartment, the pattering of soft feet, the clinking of little dishes,
and at the chinks of the screens the twinkle of diamond eyes. A whole
family had come in from Kioto for the day's pleasuring. Mamma looked
after grandmamma, and the young aunt looked after a guitar, and the two
girls of fourteen and fifteen looked after a merry little tomboy of
eight, who, when she thought of it, looked after the baby who had the
air of looking after the whole party. Grandmamma was dressed in dark
blue, mamma in blue and grey, the girls had gorgeous dresses of lilac,
fawn, and primrose crepe with silk sashes, the colour of apple blossom
and the inside of a newly cut melon; the tomboy was in old gold and
russet brown; but the baby tumbled his fat little body across the floor
among the dishes in the colours of the Japanese rainbow, which owns no
crude tints. They were all pretty, all except grandmamma, who was merely
good-humoured and very bald, and when they had finished their dainty
dinner, and the brown lanquer stands, the blue and white crockery, and
the jade-green drinking-cups had been taken away, the aunt played a
little piece on the _samisen_, and the girls played blindman's-buff all
round the tiny room.

Flesh and blood could not have stayed on the other side of the screens.
I wanted to play too, but I was too big and too rough, and so could only
sit in the verandah, watching these dainty bits of Dresden at their
game. They shrieked and giggled and chattered and sat down on the floor
with the innocent abandon of maidenhood, and broke off to kiss the baby
when he showed signs of being overlooked. They played
puss-in-the-corner, their feet tied with blue and white handkerchiefs
because the room did not allow unfettered freedom of limb, and when they
could play no more for laughing, they fanned themselves as they lay
propped up against the blue screens,--each girl a picture no painter
could reproduce,--and I shrieked with the best of them till I rolled
off the verandah and nearly dropped into the laughing street. Was I a
fool? Then I fooled in good company, for an austere man from India--a
pe