Page:My Japanese Wife.djvu/84

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70
MY JAPANESE WIFE.

Dives before the aching eyes of Lazarus. Even the wealthiest can only wear one dress at a time, and Mousmé can do this, and with far more grace than some of the salt of society.

As for Mousmé, she seems quite at home. She soon unpacks her tiny box; and, noticing that things connected with my toilet, such as my razors, hair-brushes, comb, and tin of shaving soap, are arranged near the window on an improvised dressing-table which was (when I first took the house) in reality an idol stand, she arranges hers there too. How queer they look, to be sure!

Alongside my shaving soap now stands a tiny lacquer pot with a jade lid, on which is carved a wonderfully pretty group of storks, containing the rouge which gives a delicate sunset flush to her cheeks. She puts a little on at once, right in front of me, as naturally as another woman might