He is very familiar with her, and she with him—they have known each other so long—chatting together quite freely. I am not jealous, surely; but I suddenly discover that it is time to go out. Kotmasu at once agrees that it is, and Mousmé seems delighted.
Where shall we go?
That is the all-important question, which is not easily settled.
Mousmé inclines to paying her mother a visit; Kotmasu to visiting a little play-house down below in Nagasaki, where some new geishas from Yeddo are to make their début.
I am not so fond of my mother-in-law as I should be, nor of my perplexingly numerous sisters and brothers-in-law, both small and great. The former I suspect of rapacity, an insatiable appetite for “handsome presents,” which, if not always very costly in European eyes, are certainly numerous, and range from rouge fin (imported from Paris) and blanc perle to gay-hued obis and handsome hairpins of tortoise-shell, or of bronze with carved jade heads.
Fancy supplying one’s mother-in-law with rouge! But it was Kotmasu’s doing. He was evidently in her confidence; for he said one day, just as my marriage arrangements were nearing completion:
“You give Madame Choto some rouge. The woman very fond of it. You make her like you.”
This being what I wished her to do, I did as friend Kotmasu desired, expending three yen (12s.) upon a box at Yan’s, the best druggist in Nagasaki, and paying at least four times its original price. The only satisfaction I have is the knowledge that my mother-in-law’s complexion is of the best!
Mousmé clearly is to-night all for going down to Madame Choto’s, but I have one trump card to play against that. I am destined to find it in the future—as in the past—of great service. I have merely to say, “Let us go and look at the shops.”