They were in the street running parallel with Jinrikisha Street, a street truly of the old time, narrow with the house-tops, when the houses had upper stories over-leaning the way.
Jane seemed fascinated by the contents of the little shops, that sold everything from cuttle-fish to paper lanterns. Shops that were, most of them, simply raised platforms, matted and roofed.
Here abounded the tortoise-shell carvers, and the men who can make a netsuké to charm the eye out of anything: a knot of wood, a shark’s tooth, a useless bit of ivory.
“I’m going to buy things,” said Jane, looking with a lustful eye on the cheap, or seemingly cheap, curios exposed for sale in some of the shops: old bronze gongs, kettles, sword guards, broken crockery were carefully mended, lamps, such as the Chinese magician might have hawked at the back entrance of the palace of Aladdin, fans, trick toys, and tiny boxes for holding rouge; tobacco-monos and opium pipes, broken-down English umbrellas, lacquer trays, and a heap of other dust-traps utterly useless, and some of them not very ornamental.
“If you will waste your money,” said Leslie, “I’d advise you to come to Danjuro’s. We can get to it by this lane, and I won’t let him swindle you beyond the ordinary tourist pitch.”
“Very well,” said Jane, turning from a booth bearing this cabalistic inscription on its front, “Come rightin!”[2] “The things look pretty dusty, and I don’t see anything I very much want—I’d like to buy that, though.” She pointed to a mite in the colored kimono, playing battledore and shuttlecock in the gutter with another mite of its own size. “They seem so happy and jolly, these Japanese children, and clean, and I read somewhere they never give any trouble, or break things, or annoy people—Bless the child!”
[Footnote 2: I presume “Come right in!” was the artist’s intention.]
A shuttlecock hit her a slap in the face, and the shuttlecock hitter laughed, and trotted after it, without any semblance of apology to his target.
“There’s another illusion shattered,” said Jane, wiping her face with her handkerchief.
“Have you—” began Leslie.