long-stemmed lotus, the last of the season, already smelling of autumn.
And it was really very pretty to see this Japanese girl in her little
car, lying carelessly among all these water-flowers, lighted by gleams
of ever-changing colors, as they chanced from the lanterns we met or
passed. If, on the evening of my arrival in Japan, any one had pointed
her out to me, and said: "That shall be your mousme," there can not be a
doubt I should have been charmed. In reality, however, I am not charmed;
it is only Chrysantheme, always Chrysantheme, nothing but Chrysantheme:
a mere plaything to laugh at, a little creature of finical forms and
thoughts, with whom the agency of M. Kangourou has supplied me.

CHAPTER XLIII. THE CATS AND THE DOLLS

The water used for drinking in our house, for making tea, and for lesser
washing purposes, is kept in large white china tubs, decorated with
paintings representing blue fish borne along by a swift current through
distorted rushes. In order to keep them cool, the tubs are kept out of
doors on Madame Prune's roof, at a place where we can, from the top of
our projecting balcony, easily reach them by stretching out an arm.
A real godsend for all the thirsty cats in the neighborhood, on warm
summer nights, is this corner of the roof with our gayly painted tubs,
and it proves a delightful trysting-place for them, after all their
caterwauling and long solitary rambles on the tops of the walls.

I had thought it my duty to warn Yves the first time he wished to drink
this water.

"Oh!" he replied, rather surprised, "cats, do you say? But they are not
dirty!"

On this point Chrysantheme and I agree with him: we do not consider cats
unclean animals, and we do not object to drink after them.

Yves considers Chrysantheme much in the same light. "She is not dirty,
either," he says; and he willingly drinks after her, out of the same
cup, putting her in the same category with the cats.

These china tubs are one of the daily preoccupations of our household:
in the evening, when we return from our walk, after the clamber up,
which makes us thirsty, and Madame L'Heure's waffles, which we have
been eating to beguile the way, we always find them empty. It seems
impossible for Madame Prune, or Mademoiselle Oyouki, or their young
servant, Mademoiselle Dede,--[Dede-San means "Miss Young Girl," a very
common name.]--to have forethought enough to fill them while it is still
daylight. And when we are la