And so Miss Sen, unfathomable and still guileless, never explained about the stolen visit, and Molly Brown, baffled and still glad in her heart, had to think up any explanation she could.
CHAPTER VIII.
BARBED ARROWS.
"I don't know which was the most highly polished, his manners or his shiny bronze face," ejaculated Judy when the door of No. 5 had closed upon Otoyo and her honorable father.
The small grizzled Japanese gentleman had taken tea American fashion with his daughter's Quadrangle friends. With punctilious enjoyment he had eaten everything that was offered to him, cloudbursts, salmon sandwiches, stuffed olives and chocolate cake. The girls had heard that raw carp was a favorite Japanese dish, and salmon being the only fish convenient, they had bought several cans of it in the village in honor of the national taste.
"Wasn't his English wonderful?" put in Margaret. "He said to me, 'I entertain exceedingly hopes in my daughter's educationally efforts.'"
"He asked me if I were quadrangular," laughed Edith. "I said no, quadrilateral."
"The funny part of it was that he used all those big words and spoke with such a perfect accent and yet he didn't understand anything we said," observed Molly. "All the time I was telling him how much we loved Otoyo and what a dear clever child she was, he blinked and smiled and said: 'Indeed. Is it truly? Exceedingly interestingly.'"
While they were laughing and discussing Otoyo's father, Adele Windsor, Judy's new bosom friend, walked into the room. She had formed a habit of entering their room without announcing herself, an unpardonable breach of etiquette at Wellington, as well it might be anywhere. Lately she had made herself very much at home at No. 5, lounging on the divan with a novel between lectures, or occupying the most comfortable chair while she jotted down notes on a tablet. Nance called her "the intruder" to Molly, and once she had even ventured to remark to Judy: