This is what Mousmé delights in doing. She likes best the shops in which rich dress fabrics and women’s ornaments play an important part.
A tiny parcel, done up neatly in rice-paper, betrays the fact that she has already coaxed me into purchasing “a little present.” The shopkeepers, who squat in the midst of their wares, offer no objection to Mousmé’s inspection; and as it amuses her, why should I mind?
As we go along towards the lower and harbour end of the town, the crowd of people gets denser and denser. If the terrors of horses—Nagasaki is as guiltless of horses as Venice itself—driven or ridden, were added to the _djin_-harnessed _rikishas_, one would walk along at momentary risk of annihilation.
But the _djins_ are wonderfully active and intelligent, and avoid obstacles with marvellous ability. There are few corns in Japan, and the wheel of a _rikisha_ over one’s feet, therefore, is of somewhat less moment.
Mousmé flutters along at my side, chattering in Japanese, and English of a sort, gay and contented, her sense of the ludicrous being aroused every now and then by the sight of one or other of her countrymen in the garb of civilization—Western civilization, that is. A Japanese in European attire in Europe may be an artistic mistake; in Japan an inartistic atrocity. There are several of these about, in out-of-date pot-hats, and tail-coats of the year before last’s cut. Even Kotmasu, who himself is attached to pseudo-European attire, laughs at them. How queer they look!—the pot-hat _cum_ a fringe of black, shining hair beneath its brim, and other really picturesque garments.
We are getting tired, and Mousmé’s natural lust of buying useless things is increasing.
Unfortunately, she has been told I am “one very much rich man.” Kotmasu—who is beginning to pine for the _geishas_—and I have our arms uncomfortably full of purchases——little lacquer boxes, fantastic hair-combs and pins, silk sashes, a tiny silver tobacco-pipe with tortoises, frogs and tiny lizards scarcely bigger than a pin’s head crawling up the chased stem, boxes of plums preserved in sugar, and French bonbons purchased at a ruinous price. All this is very strange, and even Mousmé’s recklessness is charming, captivating.