Page:My Japanese Wife.djvu/28

14 curiously at me, and adjusting her obi of some flower-sprinkled material with minute care, “the English sirs mostly like to feast alone.” Such was, at all events, Kotmasu’s translation of the remark.

Kotmasu orders our repast; it is to be ultra-Japanese.

Sometimes at my own villa I regale him and seek to revive my own gastronomic memories with pseudo-European fare, which he pretends to like, but in reality loathes because of its immense portions—in the estimation of my Japanese chef; at these I always laugh because the meal seems so grotesquely disproportionate to one’s needs—in Japan.

There is another reason than that so naively given—“the English sirs mostly care to feast alone”—by the almond-eyed mousmé; and Kotmasu explains it when the dainty little figure has disappeared through a sliding door to execute our