Page:My Japanese Wife.djvu/205

Rh A dense cloud drags its edge across the face of the moon, and now all—except the lights of the town and the few twinkling, feeble lamps of the ships out in the harbour, which appear brighter suddenly for lack of their celestial rival—is dark.

Kotmasu knocks the ashes out of his tiny pipe bowl with a sharp, metallic tap upon the bamboo verandah rail, and says:

“There will be another storm soon. I must be going.”

He says good-night somewhat reluctantly after all; and when we have watched him go away down the path, over the edges of which our poor rain-beaten tea-roses are straggling, with his big hat, paper umbrella on which a grinning and intelligent-looking red dragon is fearlessly daubed, and an orange paper lantern with bars and lozenges of vermilion, which the rising wind threatens every moment to overturn or extinguish, we go in.