But there are no egoists in Japan—can’t be with such a language—and there are no purse-proud snobs, or if there are, they hide themselves very closely.
For self-depreciation is the key-note of Japanese conversation and manners.
So she goes on with her story, in a voice sweet to listen to as the ripple of a mountain brook, and Lotus-bud listens under the table, fish-knife held in air, for the tale is reaching an interesting point.
Then Campanula’s voice is heard speaking to Sweetbriar San. She is coming to the kitchen to superintend things and—crack! the fish’s head is cut off, and three Mousmés are working like one.
Campanula San is younger than any of these Mousmés, and she treats them like sisters, yet strangely enough, they do not encroach, but treat her as their mistress—a condition of things impossible in Europe, and presently, perhaps, impossible in Japan.
The sun has leapt now over the hills, and Leslie is heard moving upstairs. Pine-breeze claps her hands with horror, and rises to her feet: she has forgotten to fill his bath.
She goes to do so, and Campanula wanders out the front way to the balcony, where she pauses to gaze at the azaleas, shading her eyes with her hand.
The fire is spreading; another crimson blossom is almost unfolded, and others are soon to be born. Every spring the coming of the azaleas is an event in Campanula’s life.
A wealth of crimson azaleas is one of her first recollections. Away beyond that crimson fire of flowers lies the land of her earliest childhood. The house with the plum tree, very vague indeed; the father who hit things with a hammer, still vaguer; the sugar-candy dragon lost, and so miraculously recovered; the little boy who went to sleep in the snow—or was it in a field of lilies?
Her real life, it seemed to her, began as she was reaching for a crimson blossom one day in a field of crimson blossoms, and was suddenly caught up sky-high by a thing taller than a tree, who did something to the side of her neck, just under her left ear, that was not hurtful or particularly unpleasant, but which, nevertheless, made her scream.