Page:My Japanese Wife.djvu/128

114 These streets we walk through are wonderful. They are all alike; the houses, of frailest woodwork and paper panelling, are scarcely varied in any particular, save that of ornamentation, from one end of the long row to the other. There are no shop fronts, no glass windows; so that intending purchasers, or even those who have no intentions other than curiosity, can take up the various articles so openly displayed, and examine them at their leisure.

This is what Mousmé delights in doing. She likes best the shops in which rich dress fabrics and women’s ornaments play an important part.

A tiny parcel, done up neatly in rice-paper, betrays the fact that she has already coaxed me into purchasing “a little present.” The shopkeepers, who squat in the midst of their wares, offer no objection to Mousmé’s inspection; and as it amuses her, why should I mind?