Page:My Japanese Wife.djvu/139

 morning I awoke early, roused by the twittering of grass sparrows and the weakened croak of a frog, hoarse from its vocal efforts of the night.

It was New Year’s day, and the sun was streaming through the open windows. Mousmé had already crept from her white mattress beneath the smoke-blue mosquito curtains, and was doubtless sunning herself, after a hasty toilet, in the wonderful garden which we had fashioned out of the rocks and red-brown soil.

I stretched sleepily, and wondered vaguely what they were doing in England, and whether my estimable, though trying, sister Lou (fashionable to her finger-tips) had cajoled my unfortunate brother-in-law into changing her last year’s set of furs for “something a little more the thing, don’t you know, Stanmere.”