ipe it, and of course it came off. It can't be helped." I told Her
Majesty that I was very much ashamed at being so careless, especially as
I knew it was one of her favorites, and there the matter ended. All the
rest of the Court ladies were in the waiting room and were anxious to
know how I would get out of it, and when I told them they said that had
it been any of them there would have been a fine row. They laughed,
and said it must be nice to be a favorite which made me feel very
uncomfortable. I told the Young Empress exactly what had happened, and
she said I was quite right to tell Her Majesty the truth and told me to
be very careful as there was much jealousy going on.

At the beginning of the ninth moon the chrysanthemums commence to bud
and it was the duty of the ladies of the Court to go and trim them each
day by cutting away all the buds except one on each stalk. This trimming
gives the flower a better chance of developing, a much larger blossom
being the result. Even Her Majesty would help with this work. She was
very particular about these plants, and would not allow any of us to
meddle with them if our hands were not perfectly cool, as to touch them
with hot hands would cause the leaves to shrivel up. These flowers are
generally in full bloom about the end of the ninth moon or beginning of
the tenth moon. Her Majesty had a wonderful gift of being able to tell
what kind of flower would bloom from each separate plant, even before
the buds appeared. She would say: "This is going to be a red flower,"
and we would place a bamboo stick in the flower pot, with the name
written on it. Then another, Her Majesty would declare to be a white one
and we would place a similar bamboo stick in the flower pot, with the
description, and so on. Her Majesty said: "This is your first year at
the Palace and no doubt you are surprised at what you have just seen and
heard me say, but I have never yet made a mistake. For you will see when
the flowers commence to bloom." It was a fact as everything turned out
exactly as she had predicted. None of us ever knew how she was able to
distinguish one from the other, but she was always right. I did once ask
her to explain how she was able to tell but she answered that it was a
secret.

All this time the portrait was proceeding very slowly and one day Her
Majesty asked me how long I thought it would be before it was finished
and what the custom in Europe was as regards remuneration for such