CHAPTER V
It was in the springtime, when the little leaves upon the trees were of the most entrancing shade of green and the wild plum and cherry blossoms blew in clouds of pink and white, making an impressionistic picture against the deep blue sky so lovely and entrancing that even such a serious-minded, earnest worker as the Rev. Richard Verley became unconscious of the sermon he had been writing and smiled out at the landscape.
Nature oftentimes, from her very beauty, distracts one from the work of composition, though one would call her lovingly an inspiration. How could the young missionary continue the writing of his sermon, when the alluring breezes of the spring softly slipped into his room and insistently drew the pencil from his hand. And so he sat there smiling at his desk and dreaming. He was not conscious of his dreams. He only knew the world seemed very good and fair. His pen trailed over the paper for a space, then paused, to continue again. Idly, and unconsciously, he had covered a sheet of foolscap.
The slight noise of the opening of his sliding doors caused him to come to life with a guilty start. His usually pale face was flooded with color, as for the first time he saw what he had written on the page. He turned it over quickly, though he did not lay this last sheet among the previous pages of his sermon.
A face of prodigious fatness was thrust between the shoji.
“What is it, Natsu?” asked the minister in Japanese.
“The girl Azalea,” she answered. “I have told her Your Excellency is most busy, but she still stays.”
“That is right,” he said quietly. “I am expecting her.”