ous than that of the dreaded bull. They are
blown up and down the temple-steps like fallen petals. They gather
like humming-birds round the itinerant venders of the streets, the old
men who balance on their bare shoulders their whole stock in trade of
sweetmeats, syrups, toys or singing grasshoppers. They are the dolls
of our own childhood, endowed with disconcerting life. Around their
little bodies flames the love of colour of an oriental people, whose
adult taste has been disciplined to sombre browns and greys. Wonderful
motley kimonos they make for their children with flower patterns,
butterfly patterns, toy and fairy-story patterns, printed on
flannelette--or on silk for the little plutocrats--in all colors,
among which reds, oranges, yellows, mauves, blues and greens
predominate.

They invaded the depressing atmosphere of the European-style hotel,
where Geoffrey and Asako were trying to enjoy a tasteless lunch--their
grubby, bare feet pattering on the worn lino.

It pleased him to watch them, playing their game of _Jonkenpan_
with much show of pudgy fingers, and with restrained and fitful
scamperings. He even made a tentative bid for popularity by throwing
copper coins. There was no scramble for this largesse. Gravely and
in turn each child pocketed his penny; but they all regarded Geoffrey
with a wary and suspicious eye. He, too, on closer inspection found
them less angelic than at first sight. The slimy horror of unwiped
noses distressed him, and the significant prevalence of scabby scalps.

* * * * *

After their dull lunch in this drab hotel, Geoffrey and his wife
started once more on their voyage of discovery. Nagasaki is a hidden
city; it flows through its narrow valleys like water, and follows
their serpentine meanderings far inland.

They soon left behind the foreign settlement and its nondescript
ugliness to plunge into the labyrinth of little native streets,
wayward and wandering like sheep-tracks, with sudden abrupt hills
and flights of steps which checked the rickshaws' progress. Here, the
houses of the rich people were closely fenced and cunningly hidden;
but the life of poverty and the shopkeepers' domesticity were flowing
over into the street out of the too narrow confines of the boxes which
they called their homes.

With an extra man to push behind, the rickshaws had brought them up a
zigzag hill to a cautious wooden gateway half open in a close fence of
bamboo