After a hurried consultation with Mousmé, who says, “Sugar plums! Oranges! Tea!” the little gay-hued waitress flits away in search of what we have ordered.
The garden, of which the owner is so proud that he calls it that of “The Hundred Beautiful Lights,” is a quaintly pretty one. Just behind our little summer-house, with its octagon roof of thin split laths of mahogany and paper shoji, with French-grey backgrounds adorned with country views by a local artist who has shamefully overlooked all the canons of perspective, are lotus-ponds—tiny, toy-like expanses of water in which doubtless the inevitable gold-fish swim and mouth for air bubbles; miniature waterfalls, stone votive lamps, and grotesquely trained trees, dwarfed by some strange process to accord with the minuteness of their surroundings.
Whilst we are observing all these things, and the now blossomless wisterias in their belated garb of light green, our mousmé returns, staggering along with two huge iron candlesticks three feet high, one in each hand, which are to light us at our feast. With great exactitude, she sticks two wax candles upon their respective spikes, and lights them; and then vanishes, like the genie of the lamp, to carry out further bidding.
Although the garden and tea-house were so full of patrons, we had not long to wait for our refreshments. Our mousmé knew that I was English—not, of, course, a difficult matter; and to be English spells generosity in Japanese eyes in the matter of sen for her own little pocket. So we were waited on quickly.
In a few minutes we seemed positively surrounded by tiny dishes and plates.
As an Irish gentleman who came to Japan for three months, and made my acquaintance, once said, “Everything relating to meals is so singularly numerous.”
This exactly puts it.
We had ordered a simple enough meal, in all conscience, and yet we were literally surrounded by it.
Mousmé sipped her light-coloured tea, which was suffused with cherry blossoms, with the air of a princess, and behaved as a great lady. At any rate the attendant mousmé should clearly understand that she was not like the party of geishas over there in the brilliantly lighted pagoda near the balcony, who were entertaining and being entertained by some of the gilded youths of Nagasaki.
“What a noise they make!” exclaims Mousmé with a smile of pitying disgust. “Their laugh is as hollow as a drum, and they sing because they must. They will be with some one else to-morrow night, and the next, and the next. While,” and the expression of Mousmé’s face changes and grows very soft and tender, “I have always you.”