From my position I can overlook the road which runs away up alongside my boundary fence, higher and higher, till at last it vanishes amid the greenery and the tea-gardens. Down below, the older quarters of the town lie huddled together like a flock of sheep crushing each other in the endeavour to avoid some danger, swarming with people of the poorer class. It is not quite so fine an evening as last night was, and the hill-tops are hidden in the woolly masses of threatening clouds. The twilight is gloomy, and not orange-hued as before, and darkness comes more quickly upon its heels.
I light my treasured briar, and wait as patiently as may be for my friend.
When first I came here, how all my acquaintances used to laugh at the immense bowl of my pipe, which would, I should think, hold nearly ten times as much light-hued tobacco as theirs!
“Ah! Here he is at last!” I exclaim, discerning a dark mass approaching in the gloom, up the little narrow path.
“We will go at once?” I say questioningly.
“Yes,” he replies. “They will be at home now.”
We start off down the hillside, Kotmasu evidently from his remarks regarding the matter as a huge joke. If only he realized how sincere is my admiration for Miss Hyacinth. At last we reach our destination, and turn down a short road, which shuts the gaily-lit town still further below us from our view.
Miss Hyacinth is more charming than ever. Or is it the coming in from the gloom of the dark road, along which we have picked our way by the light of paper lanterns? She is quite delightful. She even knows a little English, which she learned at the school, so she tells me; and we talk together, I smiling inwardly at her funny phrasing.
“You speakee Japanese good,” she says, with a glance from her sparkling eyes, and red lips wide open in her struggle with the last word.