As for Mousmé, she seems quite at home. She soon unpacks her tiny box; and, noticing that things connected with my toilet, such as my razors, hair-brushes, comb, and tin of shaving soap, are arranged near the window on an improvised dressing-table which was (when I first took the house) in reality an idol stand, she arranges hers there too. How queer they look, to be sure!
Alongside my shaving soap now stands a tiny lacquer pot with a jade lid, on which is carved a wonderfully pretty group of storks, containing the rouge which gives a delicate sunset flush to her cheeks. She puts a little on at once, right in front of me, as naturally as another woman might wash her hands, probably because she feels she must do something before a glass which is, as she puts it, “so big and great and bright,” compared to those to which she has been accustomed. Then there is a little pot—also with a jade lid—containing a white face preparation, the use of which I shall at once inhibit; this she puts close beside the other by the force of association of ideas. The tiny brushes, with backs of tortoise-shell, the combs of the same, the hairpins with big eccentric knobs, are all placed near my gigantic brushes.
Then her few garments are taken from the box and hung—also like mine—on pegs which I have had put up on the wall near my mattress-like bed.
Mousmé is satisfied with her work, exclaiming, “Velly good ting that!” in the monotonous voice of a person speaking an unaccustomed tongue, and we are ready for our first meal.
She is pleased with herself, with me, with her new home, with everything. And after our dinner, during which she has chattered in most diverting English, learned at school from an “English teacher,” anxious to please me, whom she still, I fear, looks upon as her owner, she proposes to sing.
What queer English it was!—often almost unrecognizable from mispronunciation. She still calls me “Mister,” and almost makes me choke with smothered laughter each time.
Fully twenty minutes are occupied in attempts to master the appalling intricacies of “Cyril”—my name. The nearest approach as yet is “Cy-reel,” which must do for the present, with lapses into “Mister” when she forgets.
Whilst I smoke, Mousmé sings songs in a soft little tone, to the accompaniment of her long-necked samisen.