Page:My Japanese Wife.djvu/147

Rh sketched in black. It took Mousmé’s fancy. We purchased it, and earned the absurdly exaggerated thanks of the smiling vendors, knowing the while that we did not require it, and that it would be placed with a score of others, hung on their slight bamboo rods, in the cupboard at the end of the passage.

Some night, perhaps, unless another lantern comes more easily to hand, we might take it out to guide us on our way down to the chaya at which the best geishas dance.

During the whole of the morning we were expectant. Before sunset many of Mousmé’s numerous relations will have called to wish us New Year joys: and my respected, if too effusive, mother-in-law will have once more asked me if I am satisfied with her daughter.

She even yet seems to think that her daughter is on approval, and liable at any