Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/210

 four inches high. Rice is boiled in quantities large enough to last for one, or even two days. It is heated over when wanted, or hot tea is poured over the cold rice after it is served. Our guide cooked all our food, laid our high table with its proper furnishings, and was assisted by the nesans in carrying things up and down the stairs. In a small room opening from the office two girls were sorting the landlord’s new tea just brought in from the country. They sat before a large table raised only a few inches from the floor, and, from a heap of the fragrant leaves at one end, scattered little handfuls thinly over the lacquer top. With their deft fingers they slid to one side the smallest and finest leaves from the tips of the new shoots of the plant, and to the other side the larger and coarser growth, doing it all so quickly and surely that it was a pleasure to watch them. In another corner of the office two other little maids were putting clean cases on all the pillows of the house. The Japanese pillow is a wooden box, with a little padded roll on top, which is covered with a fresh bit of soft, white mulberry-paper each day. The bath room was as accessible as the kitchen, without a door, but with glass screens, and one large tank in which three or four could sociably dip together. Here were splashing and talking until midnight, and steam issued forth continually, as guests and the household staff took their turn. The landlord requested the masculine head of our party to use a special tub that stood in an alcove of the office, a folding-screen about three feet high being set up to conceal him from the populous precincts of office, corridor, garden, and main street. A too vigorous sweep of his stalwart arm, however, knocked down his defence, and dropping to his chin in the water, he called for help; whereupon the two maids, who were sorting tea, ran over and set the barrier up again, as naturally as a foreign servant would place the fire-screen before a grate. 194