f little married couples like
our own, from the inevitable tour of the tea-houses and bazaars. While
the other mousmes walked along hand in hand, adorned with new silver
top-knots which they had succeeded in having presented to them, and
amusing themselves with playthings, she, pleading fatigue, followed,
half reclining, in a djin carriage. We had placed beside her great
bunches of flowers destined to fill our vases, late iris and
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
cannot be a doubt I should have been charmed. In reality, however, no,
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, that the agency of M.
Kangourou has supplied me with.

XLIII.

In our house, the water used for drinking, making tea, and 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
placed 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 the arm. A real godsend for all the thirsty cats in
the neighborhood on the fine summer nights is this corner of the roof
with our bedaubed tubs, and it proves a delightful trysting-place for
them, after all their caterwauling and long solitary rambles on the
top 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? they are not
dirty!"

On this point Chrysantheme and I agree with him: we do not consider
cats as 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.

Well, these china tubs are one of the daily preoccupations of our
household: in the evening, when we return from o