"No come," said Sanno, cheerfully, from the step where he was keeping watch. "Tea?"
Without waiting for an answer, he clapped his hands, calling, "O Cha!"
Another small maiden in a cherry-blossom kimono, carrying a brazier full of live coals, trotted around the corner and conducted Percival back to his apartment. She proved even more irritating than the first one, for during the tea-making she stopped many times to examine his cuff-links, wrist-watch, and ring, making purring exclamations of delight over each discovery. When he used his monocle she tried it also, and when he took out his cigarette-case, she must examine every detail and help herself to a cigarette into the bargain. Percival was acutely bored. He regarded her as a persistent fly that refused to be brushed away. He sat with his back against the paper screen, his stockinged feet rigidly extended, drinking his tea as solemnly as if he had been in the most formal drawing-room of Grosvenor Square.
The rainy afternoon closed in to twilight, and still the Weston party did not come. Percival's impatience gave place to anger, but he doggedly waited.
"Could they have gone back another way?" he demanded of Sanno.
"Way?" repeated Sanno.
Percival made a drawing on paper and tried to convey his meaning, but it was useless.
"'Merican game?" asked Sanno, grinning.
At last, in desperation, Percival decided to return.
"Yaami Hotel, Kioto," he directed.