grace, and drinks an astonishing number of cups of pale amber-coloured tea; but then the cups are so small that her doing so provokes little wonder in my mind. She has, perhaps, a misgiving that she has eaten more than I can afford, although I overheard my mother-in-law telling her that I was a very rich man; for she says, interrogatively, “I eat too great velly much? Not eat so again?”
I smilingly assure her that she is to eat as much as she can, and she laughs and gets up to attend to the flowers on the verandah, and place fresh blossoms in the blue china bowls which stand on eccentric perches on the walls, in the corners of the room, on a bamboo and lacquer cabinet, and on my English-pattern knee-hole writing-table in the window.
Mousmé has deft fingers and good taste, and the flowers seem to arrange themselves in negligently artistic masses beneath her touch.
