_Duke of Westminster_?" looking from one to the other of us.

"We believe they did!" gasped Orthodocia, and immediately looked out of
the window again. I edged my chair toward the other window. Then the
cloven foot appeared in the shape of a note-book. He produced it with
gentle ostentation, as one would a trump card. The simile is complete
when I add that he took it from his sleeve.

"How old is rady?" calmly, deliberately.

"I--I forget," falsified this historian; "forty-five, I believe."

The reporter put it down.

"Other rady, your friend,--not so old? Older? More old?"

"I am twenty-two years of age," said Orthodocia gravely, with a
reproachful glance at me, "and I weigh ten stone. Height, five feet
eight inches. In shoes, I am in the habit of wearing fives; in gloves,
six and a half."

The reporter scribbled convulsively.

"Radies will study Japanese porryticks--please say."

"I beg pardon?"

"Yes." Fills another page.

Orthodocia, suavely, "Are they produced here to any extent?"

"We have here many porryticks--ribarer, conservative, monarchist."

"Oh!" more recourse to the window.

"Orthodocia," I said severely, "you may not be aware of it, but your
conduct is throwing discredit upon a person hitherto fairly entitled to
the world's good opinion--which is me. Continue to be absorbingly
interested in that brick wall, and allow me to talk to the gentleman."

"We have come," I said distinctly--Orthodocia bears testimony to the
fact that I said it distinctly--"to see Japan as far as Japan will
permit. Her politics, system of education, customs, and arts will be
of--ahem!--interest to us. We cannot truthfully say that we expect to
penetrate more deeply into the national life than other travellers have
done. In repressing this expectation we claim to be original. We
confess that our impressions will naturally be superficial, but we hope
to represent the crust so charmingly that nobody will ask for any of
the--interior--of the--well, of the pie."

"That's equivocal," said Orthodocia, "and ridiculous."

"Notwithstanding the well-known reticence of the Japanese," I
continued, "we hope to meet some of them who will show us something
more of their domesticity than we can see through the windows."

"You will acquire ranguage of Japan?"

"Not all of it, I think. It seems a little difficult, but musical--much
more musical than our ugly English," interposed Orthodocia.

"Yes. Will you the story of your j