"Oh, it is nothing very serious. It has been pretty hot and I have been working rather hard of late, so I was a trifle run down; that is all. I shall be fit as a fiddle by the end of my stay here. There are some tremendously interesting excursions to be made from this centre, you know. One is to Lake Hakoné and another is to that grewsome spot O-Jigoku. There is a magnificent view of Fujisan from there. You will need an alpenstock if you go. Here is a good one. Let me get it for you. You can keep it to carve names on, names of places you visit and people you meet. May I put my humble initials on it?"
What could Nan do but consent? And she stood silently by as he made the initials of her own name first, placing his own under them, the little Japanese shopkeeper looking on with a smile, probably to see how much less dextrous these foreigners were than her own countrymen who produced such wonders of carving.
Nan accepted the stick with a meek "Thank you," and felt herself very disloyal to Jack, this giving her cause to make only a hurried survey of mosaics and inlaid woods, of dainty carvings and ingenious toys. She bought one or two things to give countenance to her errand in the rain and then declared she must return, steadily ignoring all suggestions to visit other shops or to take tea in one of the many pretty little tea-houses. Mr. Harding dismissed his jinrikisha and walked to the hotel with her where he received a warm welcome.
"You are the one thing needed to make us a complete party," declared Jack. "A lot of women without one man to countenance them is an anomalous organization," and so he was taken in quite as a matter of course.
A trip to Lake Hakoné was arranged for the very next day, if it did not rain. "We must make the most of you," Jack told Mr. Harding, "for if you have only a week it may rain half of it and we don't want to put off anything that ought by rights to include you." She expected to appropriate the young man as a right, Nan noticed.
But Jack's plan did not come out entirely as she expected, for as they were sitting on the verandah that evening, Jean grabbed her twin sister's arm. "Jack, Jack," she exclaimed, "here is that Mr. Warner that came over on the steamer with us."
"Oh, bother!" cried Jack shaking her head with a frown. "I don't suppose he will have sense enough to realize that he will be in the way."
"You couldn't expect him to after being nice to him on the steamer," returned Jean.
"Oh, well, that was because he came in handy to walk with and to tuck in my steamer rug and things like that. He is a silly ass, and I don't want him around. You will have to take him off my hands, Jean."
"Indeed I shall not then," returned Jean. "I don't like him any better than you do, and I am quite sure I never gave him any occasion for thinking so, which is quite the opposite of the way you did."