Page:Soseki - Botchan (1918).djvu/240

 one of the geishas who came to our dinner the other night, and he answered, “Yes, I got the wind of the fact only recently; you’re sharp.”

“Red Shirt always speaks of refinement of character or of mental consolation, but he is making a fool of himself by chasing round a geisha. What a dandy rogue. We might let that go if he wouldn’t make fuss about others making fools of themselves. I understand through the principal he stopped your going even to noodle houses or dango shops as unbecoming to the dignity of the school, didn’t he?”

“According to his idea, running after a geisha is a mental consolation but tempura or dango is a material pleasure, I guess. If that’s mental consolation, why doesn’t the fool do it above board? You ought to see the jacknape skipping out of the room when the geisha came into it the other night,–I don’t like his trying to deceive us, but if one were to point it out for him, he would deny it or say it was the Russian literature or that the