And still his thoughts would stray whilst he gummed and stamped the envelopes, and they would be buying dolls now at booths in Jinrikisha Street, or helping to fly kites at the House of the Clouds.
They would stand watching a small person playing kitsune-ken with another person of her own age; and the same small person laboring up the Hill to the House of the Clouds, burdened with a bundle of books, and sheltered beneath a many-ribbed crimson umbrella.
Then they would glance at the same person, bigger grown, and suddenly become beautiful; then they would heave their shoulders and sigh, and all come back to help in the addressing of a letter to M’Clintock of Osaka, or some other magnate of the Jap Rubbish Trade.
Mac was in love, as I have before indicated: in love with three people. A tiny dot in a blue kimono and stiff sash; a person somewhat similarly dressed, whom he had sometimes helped of evenings with her lessons, or watched as she pricked her fingers over needlework; and a Mousmé as pretty as seven.
He had been in love for years without knowing it; a flower had been growing in this dusty soil, where one could not fancy any green thing finding nutriment, unless, perhaps, a weed. A white flower, pure and without stain.
Nothing could be more ideal than this love, nothing with legs and arms attached to it could be more un-ideal than Mac. And the strange thing was that this pure blossom of the soul did not improve the soul it grew from a bit, at least as far as human eye could see, for the man of the Great Tung Jade and the Lessar papers incidents was, morally, just the same—worse, if anything—as the wailing clients of Danjuro could testify.
When Campanula was alone with Leslie in these later days, she wore a grave and thoughtful air. Watching her, one could perceive that he alone possessed her mind; all the quaint and charming ways of her childhood, all things frivolous and light, she seemed to have dropped and left behind her with her toys.
When Campanula was quite alone with M’Gourley, a subtle change came over her. The child came out and played.
Though Leslie had adopted her as a daughter, she had by no means adopted him as a father.
Tod M’Gourley was her adoptive father, or, at least, she treated him as such. He acted also as uncle, aunt, grandmother, brother and general playmate all combined; and any half-holiday during the last few years, you might have seen Campanula and her family strolling along Jinrikisha Street, or on the Bund: the family in an old top hat, black broadcloth suit, and bearing a gamp umbrella in its hard fist.