"I am summoned," he said to Kobo.
"Yes. I will accompany you. Let us finish our meal."
Bob was so much excited that he found it hard to eat. The others were outwardly as calm as though nothing had happened. The many courses were brought in as usual by the smiling musumés. Bob made a pretence at partaking of them all, but he was glad when the meal was over, and his host announced that rickshaws would be at the door in half an hour. It seemed an age. The moment of parting came. Bob bade farewell to O Kami San and O Toyo San, thanking them with a full heart for the hospitality they had shown him, then mounted to his place. Kobo San followed him. There was no hand-clasp, no good-bye kiss; wife, daughter, the musumés bent to the ground in the lowliest of obeisances; and as the coolies started to run down the hill, Bob looked back and saw them all at the door, still with smiling faces, and heard in their pretty, unstressed accents the soft, long-drawn-out word of farewell:
"Sayonara! Sa—yo—na—ra!"
CHAPTER IV
Six to One
A Newspaper Paragraph—Scenes by the Way—Mistaken Identity—A Warm Corner—A Modern Miracle—Yamaguchi
The train rattled down to Tokio, cutting at intervals through the magnificent avenue of cryptomerias, at such a headlong pace that Bob feared every moment lest it should jump the rails and end his career before it had begun. But he reached Tokio whole in limb, and, taking leave of Kobo San at the station, hurried to his hotel. After making his preparations, he found that there was an hour or two to spare before the train left for the west, and went into the reading-room to look at the papers, which he had not seen during his absence. There he encountered a dejected group, comprising his ship-board acquaintances Mr. Morton, Herr Schwab, and Monsieur Desjardins, together with a few other Europeans and a couple of Americans, all evidently correspondents.
"Hullo!" shouted Morton. "Thought you were at Hong-Kong by now. I wish I were!"
Morton's loud voice, and the atmosphere of the hotel, struck Bob with a curious sense of incongruity after the quiet of his recent sojourn at Nikko.