"Your story of the rejected child did it," reproached the nakodo, on the way.
"I had not got to the worst," said his client, ruefully. "I meant to cite an example exactly to suit her own case."
"Lucky she turned us out when she did, then."
"What do you mean, sir?" demanded the suitor, in sudden wrath.
"Oh," said the broker, in polite haste, "I was beginning to feel—ill."
The irony of this escaped the client. Still, Goro would have had a less opinion of Yamadori if, having lied once, he had not lied again in defense of the first.
Though Yamadori came no more, he had brought the serpent to Madame Butterfly's Eden.
IX
"'BOUT BIRDS"
One day she took her courage, and the maid's too, for that matter, in both hands, and called upon the American consul. She saw the vice-consul. There was a west wind, and it was warm at Nagasaki. He was dozing. When
