Mousmé is like her Western sisters in her fear of mice.
“But I shall be there, Mousmé,” I reply, as she squeezes my hand.
“Yes, Cy-reel;” then with a coquettish smile, which I can see ere we pass out into the gloom of the verandah, “perhaps, perhaps it may be all right.”
It had been raining. Such torrents of rain! Kotmasu had come up to see us through it all. A queer figure in an out-of-date English mackintosh, the rubber as well as the style of which, he had admitted under pressure of my chaff, had perished, and a wonderful umbrella-like hat of huge diameter.
Down all the mountain-paths, and the steep roads leading into the town, the miniature torrents ran, as if they must sweep away the very foundations of the frail, queer-looking houses.
The harbour was blotted out, the town obscured by the vast grey masses of cloud, which, topping the hills they hid, seemed to fall down their sides into the hollow of the town.
Mousmé and I, till Kotmasu came, had watched the scene from the verandah, waiting for the rifts in the watery veil which, sure to come sooner or later, would give us exquisite peeps of indescribable loveliness.
Now all three of us are standing there in all the silver glory of Japanese moonlight.
Kotmasu even is silent, and makes no further attempt to explain English ways and customs to Mousmé.