"I presume," said the Ambassador, "because white is the Japanese mourning color."
"Of course. How stupid of me!" She sat suddenly upright. "Of all things! There's our 'Dandy'!" She pointed to a tiny Pomeranian on the seat of the last rick'sha. "I wondered why number-three boy was washing him so hard this morning! It's a mercy he didn't see us, or he'd have broken up the procession. Please take note that he's the tail-end—which shows my own unofficial insignificance."
"There's a tourist at the hotel," said the Ambassador, "who should have seen this. I was there the other day and I overheard her speaking to one of the Japanese clerks. She said she had seen everything but a funeral, and she wanted him to instruct her guide to take her to one. The clerk said: 'I am too sorry, Madam, but this is not the season for funerals.'"
The horses trotted on, to drop to a walk, presently, on a brisk incline. High, slanting retaining walls were on either side, and double rows of cherry-trees, whose interlacing branches wove a roof of soft pink bloom. Along the road were many people; inkyo—old men who no longer labored, and ba-San—old women whom age had relieved from household cares—bent and withered and walking with staves or leaning on the arms of their daughters, who bore babies of their own strapped to their backs; children clattering on loose wooden clogs; youths sauntering with kimono'd arms thrown, college-boy fashion, about each other's shoulders; a troop of young girls in student hakama—skirts of deep purple or garnet—laughing and chatting in low voices or airily swinging bundles tied in colored furoshiki. Midway the wall opened into a miniature park filled with trees, with a small lake and a Shinto monument.
"Why, there's little Ishikichi," said Patricia. "I never saw him so far from home before. Isn't that a queer-looking man with him!"
The solemn six-year-old, Barbara's window acquaintance of the morning, was trotting from the inclosure, his small fingers clutching the hand of a foreigner. The latter was of middle age. His coat was a heavy, double-breasted "reefer." His battered hat, wide-brimmed and soft-crowned, was a joke. But his linen was fresh and good and his clumsy shoes did not conceal the smallness and shapeliness of his feet. He was lithe and well built, and moved with an easy swing of shoulder and a step at once quick and graceful. His back was toward them, but Barbara could see his long, gray-black hair, a square brow above an aquiline profile at once bold and delicate, and a drooping mustache shot with gray. Many people seemed to regard him, but he spoke to no one save his small companion. His manner, as he bent down, had something caressing and confiding.
At the sound of wheels the man turned all at once toward them. As his gaze met Barbara's, she thought a startled look shot across it. At side view his face had seemed a dark olive, but now in the vivid sunlight it showed blanched. His eyes were deep in arched orbits. One, she noted, was curiously prominent and dilated. From a certain bird-like turn of the head, she had an impression that this one eye was nearly if not wholly sightless. All this passed through her mind in a flash, even while she wondered at his apparent agitation.
For as he gazed, he had dropped the child's hand. She saw his lips compress in an expression grim and forbidding. He made an involuntary movement, as though mastered by a quick impulse. Then, in a breath, his face changed. He shrank back, turned sharply into the park and was lost among the trees.
"What an odd man!" exclaimed Patricia. "I suppose he resented our staring at him. He's left the little chap all alone, too. Stop the horses a moment, Tucker," she directed, and as they pulled up she called to the child.
But there was no reply. Ishikichi looked at her a moment frowningly, then, without a word, turned and stalked somberly after his companion.