"The loss of an ear!" repeated Bob. "Surely he cannot be the man we picked up off Nagasaki?"
Kobo San's expression betrayed just a hint of enquiry, and Bob proceeded to give an account of the Chinaman's rescue. This was the beginning of a long conversation, which, starting with Kobo's previous relations with the Manchu, drifted away into a variety of subjects, giving Bob every now and again a suggestion of his visitor's extraordinary range and versatility. He was clearly a man of wide reading and many interests, had been a great traveller in his younger days, and spoke as though at home equally in all the great capitals of the west. So interested was Bob that he did not notice the increasing number of rickshaws halting at the entrance to the hotel, depositing guests laden with strange bundles, the spoils of long chaffering in the Naka-dori.
This influx was the sure indication of approaching tiffin, and when the Japanese rose to take his leave, Bob awakened to the fact, and with some diffidence begged the pleasure of his visitor's company. Kobo San, however, explained that he had but just time to keep an appointment with his excellency the minister of war, and while courteously expressing his regrets, extended to Bob an invitation to his own house on the following day. Bob accepted with genuine pleasure, and escorted his visitor to the street. The two shook hands almost with the cordiality of old friends.
As Bob turned to re-enter the hotel, he encountered the little waiter gazing after the retreating form with a mixture half of admiration half of awe.
"Rokuro Kobo San, he very great man," he said, confidentially. "He kindly send my poor uncle to hon'ble prison."
CHAPTER III
A Samurai's Home
A Japanese Interior—An Oriental Menu—Tales of Old Japan—The Quarrel with Russia—Chang-Wo—Raiding the Raiders—Good-bye
"Takaki ya ni
Noborite mireba—"
Bob rubbed his eyes, and became conscious of a crick in the neck. He thought for a moment he must be in a railway-train; the sensation was just the same that he had experienced on a night journey to London, when he had had a compartment to himself, and lay stretched on a seat with his head on the elbow cushion at the end. But no: he had never heard in England such a thin soft voice, singing in utter tunelessness such strange words—