“Gracious, no! I hate eels. First a cemetery, and then an eel-house! I have half a mind to go back to the hotel.”
“Well, a tea house, then; we can go to the Tea House of a Thousand Joys.”
“Oh, that quite decides the matter,” said she, assuming an outraged air, and hailing one of two rikshas that were passing.
Leslie hailed the other, and quietly directed the riksha boys to the cemetery.
CHAPTER XX
THE SONG OF THE MUSHI
“It almost makes one wish one were dead,” sighed Jane. They were sitting on a moss-grown tussock near a grave adorned with a fresh spray of cherry-blossom, contained in a joint of bamboo. Beneath them the hill stretched downwards, terrace after terrace, casting before their eyes the cold color of marble, and the mournful green of cryptomeria trees, the delicate tracery of ferns, and the glory of the wild camellias. Beyond lay the blue of the harbor, black-blue where the wooded cliffs met the water; from the water the hills led the eye past camphor woods and the green of the young bamboo, up and away to where the brown of their summits cut the dazzling azure of the sky. “I have never seen anything so beautiful, so peaceful. What are you thinking of, Dick?”
“I was thinking,” said Leslie, rousing himself, “that we might have luncheon at my place.”