“There wasn’t any one to see,” said Leslie, rising to his feet. “And talking about hugging—”
“I don’t want to talk about hugging—talk about hugging! Do you fancy yourself on Hampstead Heath? Come, let us find George. I want something common-place after all this.”
They found George and Campanula—the most strangely matched pair in the world—waiting for them at the gates.
“You’ll come and dine with us at the hotel, won’t you?” asked Jane as they got into the rikshas.
“I’ll come right enough,” said Leslie. “Wait, please.”
He went to Campanula’s riksha and asked her, but she prayed to be honorably excused—she had a headache.
She passed her hand across her forehead as if in confirmation of her words. Leslie tucked the riksha blanket round her knees, and explained to the Du Telles, and they started.
The quaint city they had come through had changed to a quainter city still. Night had blotted out the traces of Europe on Nagasaki—at least, in the purely native streets. All sorts of strange little trades that sleep in the daytime had awakened with the dusk. Things queer in the daytime were now mysterious, and things common, quaint. The fish shop, with its huge paper lantern, besides the fish and the sea-weed on its slabs, disposed of dreams which it flung away gratis to the passing traveler in the running riksha, and the booth of the sandal merchant, with the tiny potted rose tree in front of the wares, became at once an apology and atonement for all the commonplace villainy condensed in the word “shop.”
Mousmés passed, now half Mousmés, half glowworms, each bearing a colored lantern on the end of a little stick; and then the shadows half lit by lamp-light, where a cherry tree was attempting to peep into the street: the light of lamps glimmering through paper shutters, the light of lanterns swinging in the wind—red, blue, white, and yellow, some pictured with chrysanthemums; the stork that stands so boldly forth in Japanese pictures but is nearly gone from Japan, cherry-blossoms, and fish that seem swimming vigorously in a bowl of water lambent and green; and then the sounds, ten chamécens for one in the day. The riksha whisks by a booth, whence comes the squalling of cats—seemingly. It is the gaku, Japanese poetry set to music and flung into the lamp-lit street to make things stranger, and heighten, if possible, the charm. At the corner of the by-street leading to the House of the Clouds they met Pine-breeze simply laden with all sorts of weird and wonderful paper boxes, and lighting herself on her way with a lantern pictured with a cuttle-fish and carried on the end of a short bamboo rod. She had been marketing. It was a fortunate meeting, for she could escort Campanula home.