s bound to keep, as an advertisement of his generosity, and to do his
dirty work for him. A Japanese family mansion is very like a hive--of
drones.

Nor is this the entire population of the Fujinami _yashiki_. Across
the garden and beyond the bamboo grove is the little house of Mr.
Fujinami's stepbrother and his wife; and in the opposite corner, below
the cherry-orchard, is the _inkyo_, the dower house, where old
Mr. Fujinami Gennosuke, the retired Lord--who is the present Mr.
Fujinami's father by adoption only--watches the progress of the family
fortunes with the vigilance of Charles the Fifth in the cloister of
Juste.

* * * * *

Mr. Fujinami Gentaro shuffled his way towards a little room like a
kind of summer-house, detached from the main building and overlooking
the lake and garden from the most favourable point of vantage.

This is Mr. Fujinami's study--like all Japanese rooms, a square box
with wooden framework, wooden ceiling, sliding paper _shoji_, pale
golden _tatami_ and double alcove. All Japanese rooms are just the
same, from the Emperor's to the rickshaw-man's; only in the quality
of the wood, in the workmanship of the fittings, in the newness and
freshness of paper and matting, and by the ornaments placed in the
alcove, may the prosperity of the house be known.

In Mr. Fujinami's study, one niche of the alcove was fitted up as a
bookcase; and that bookcase was made of a wonderful honey-coloured
satinwood brought from the hinterland of China. The lock and
the handles were inlaid with dainty designs in gold wrought by a
celebrated Kyoto artist. In the open alcove the hanging scroll of Lao
Tze's paradise had cost many hundreds of pounds, as had also the Sung
dish below it, an intricacy of lotus leaves caved out of a single
amethyst.

On a table in the middle of this chaste apartment lay a pair of
gold-rimmed spectacles and a yellow book. The room was open to the
early morning sunlight; the paper walls were pushed back. Mr. Fujinami
moved a square silk cushion to the edge of the matting near the
outside veranda. There he could rest his back against a post in
the framework of the building--for even Japanese get wearied by the
interminable squatting which life on the floor level entails--and
acquire that condition of bodily repose which is essential for
meditation.

Mr. Fujinami was in the habit of meditating for one hour every
morning. It was a tradition of his house; hi