“Miss Kamikura and my sister, Hama-san,” Takishima said, smiling with keen enjoyment at Phil’s evident pleasure. Phil bowed and shook hands in American fashion with the two bright-faced Japanese girls. He recognized the name of one to be the same as an illustrious admiral.
“My chief’s daughter,” Takishima added, in a low tone to Phil, while the young ladies with their own hands brought refreshments from the heaping tables. “They are ladies of the household, assisting our Empress at the garden fête.”
Phil gazed with renewed interest at these doll-like beauties, wishing to speak, yet believing that surely neither could understood English.
“How old are they?” he thought—“surely not beyond sixteen years.”
Takishima had been talking to the young ladies in his own soft language, while Phil studied their enthusiastic faces. He knew that he was the subject of the conversation, and felt very conscious until Hama-san changed this feeling to one of delighted surprise.
“Then you are one of my brother’s schoolmates,” Takishima’s sister, Hama-san, exclaimed, again bowing gracefully to Phil. The midshipman was startled to hear one of these delicate dolls speak his own difficult language, and the surprise in his face caused all three of his companions to laugh gayly.
“You speak English!” he gasped, and then joined in the laugh on himself. “How stupid of me,” he added hastily. “O Hama-san was at Vassar while Taki was at Annapolis.
“Do you speak English too?” he asked of Miss Kamikura.
Cho Kamikura, or O Chio-san, as she was called by her friends, shook her head, smiling nevertheless into the lad’s face.
Phil almost dropped the plate from which he was eating, as he suddenly saw his sought for Mr. Impey enter the tent and come directly toward his party. Takishima grasped his hand cordially, while his woman companion stopped to speak with Phil’s new-found girl friends. Then, his pulse beating fast, he felt Takishima’s hand on his arm, and he turned about to encounter the not too friendly eyes of Impey.