Mousmé gets nothing from her mother, I am glad to notice, except, perhaps, a certain almost indefinable womanliness, which all Japanese women seem to possess. It is almost as intangible as some of their perfumes.
I am offered tea in dainty doll’s-house cups of blue egg-shell china, and smoke a ridiculous little pipe, because Miss Hyacinth prepared it for me, stuffing the tobacco into the tiny bowl with the tip of her small finger. She smoked, too, a little silver-mounted pipe, with a great deal of useless ornamentation on it; but refused my offer of a service like that rendered to me. She let me light it, however, with a bit of glowing charcoal, held in a pair of tongs which were formed by bronze lizards placed in the necessary acrobatic pose; and seemed pleased with the attention I paid her.
Mousmé, for so I begin to call her, has,
