Page:My Japanese Wife.djvu/42

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MY JAPANESE WIFE.

head with bristling whiskers indicated and large white-balled eyes, was missing. The door-panel, with its flight of storks, and stiff but wonderfully realistic bed of rushes from which the storks had risen, was slid aside, and through the narrow opening the little dancing-girl fluttered softly in, like some gay-hued butterfly or large-winged night-moth.

“It is Snowflake!” exclaimed Kotmasu, and ere the dainty little figure bowed low before us, I caught a fleeting glance of recognition shot to him from beneath her drooped eyelids.

What a droll doll she is! Childish, with an assumption of innocence which is as charming as it must be unreal. An elegant, slender little figure, full of dainty grace. Her face painted—till it looked positively funny—its whiteness hiding the native transparency of her warm-hued skin, all damask rose and nut-brown