“Ho, ho, ho, how deeply in love you are with unhumanity, Sensei!”
“Nor can you deny that you are not without partiality for it, after your bridal gown show yesterday?” I made a lunge.
She parried by saying sweetly with a coquettish smile: “A nice reward please.”
“What for, my young lady?”
“You wished to see, and so I took the trouble to get up the show for you.”
“I wished?”
“A Sensei of painting who had come up crossing the mountain, took the trouble, I am told, to ask the old woman of a humble tea house on the mountain pass to let him see me in my wedding gown.”
This came so unexpectedly that I was out of a ready answer. Nor did the woman give me any chance, she quickly came down on me:
“All obliging, however sincere, can only be lost on a man so forgetful,” came in mocking reproach, like a frontal blow. I was beginning to get the worst of it, being at her mercy, unable to catch up with the start she had of me.
“That bath tank show, last night, was then, also out of your kindness?” I narrowly managed to regain my ground.