"Oh, no. I thought we had better run because it was so late," she answered breathlessly, while Yoritomo, following close behind, calm and collected, bade them a formal good night and hurried over to the summer house to pay his respects to Miss Campbell and her cousin.
Nancy decided that night not to tell Billie, her intimate confidante, what the Japanese had said to her. The walls were too thin, she thought. Besides, she was curious to know if Yoritomo would be on the bridge the next afternoon. Just how she intended to find this out, she had not then decided.
CHAPTER III.
SHOPPING IN JINRIKSHAS.
"I feel very much like a baby in a baby carriage," observed Miss Helen Campbell as Mr. Campbell almost lifted her into the graceful little two-wheeled vehicle. "And is that poor soul going to turn into a horse and pull me?" she demanded.
"You aren't such a heavy load," replied her cousin. "I doubt if the S. P. C. A. would get excited over it. I am only sorry you have to be alone, but I suppose those four inseparables are paired off as usual. Billie with Nancy and Mary with Elinor."
"Indeed, I much prefer to be alone," said Miss Campbell. "Then I can hold on with both hands in case I am upset backwards."
"You never will be. They will treat you like spun glass. You will take good care of the ladies, Komatsu," he said to the 'riksha man who, leaning against the garden wall, resembled a bronze figure, brown and muscular.
"Gracious lady of fearing not need," answered Komatsu with an ingratiating smile as he stepped between the shafts of the 'riksha.
"It is impossible to tell how much English they know and how much they don't know," Mr. Campbell confided to his relative in a low voice. "They never ask twice and they always make some kind of an out at a reply. But I think, until I can go with you, it is safer for you to go in the 'rikshas. The common people here aren't used to motor cars and there are still some fanatics in Japan, you know, who are opposed to every sort of progress and the invasion of foreign customs."