days the superior classes of them were spared that indignity. So far from evading questions, the presiding representative of Spear-hand, an elderly woman with a not unkindly face, seemed amused by my interest and answered readily. I began to think we had made a mistake. This decorous tea-party, removed from the glare and hustle of the street, bore small resemblance to an orgy. But now and then wild incidents surged up in the low ripple of current gossip. Six months before a fire had broken out in Ageyamachi, consuming half an alley of too contiguous wooden dwellings and costing twenty lives. Recently a brawl between Russian sailors and Tōkyō students had fluttered all the dovecots of Sami Cho, but had been speedily quenched by the fearless dapper police.
A sound of thrumming from the floor above hinted that the next item on the programme would be musical. We mounted and found ourselves in presence of two geisha, Miss Wistaria and Miss Dolly, who had been summoned by my cicerone while I was interrogating the Shinzo. The status and performance of these geisha differ considerably from those of their more respectable sisters, and Europeans, by confusing the two, have no doubt helped to affix a stigma to the whole class. Miss Dolly was no more than a child, and Miss Wistaria looked about sixteen. Both songs and dances, without being vulgar, were decidedly lax ; and, as the songs were topical, I followed them less easily than the dance, which might have been named after a primitive Japanese goddess, "The Female who Invites." Yet I must confess that the indelicacy was not blatant, but redeemed by a coy conscientiousness as of one who, half laughing, half shrinking, complies with an inevitable command.
