right; and his
hauteur may match your own at times. Moreover, he may decamp any
morning without giving notice--Lafcadio Hearn dwells upon the
_impermanency_ of the Japanese, and we can all bear him out. But on
the other hand the Jap will keep your house cleaner than any other
sort of servant, and he can be both amiable and alert when he
chooses. I merely warn you, for I know nothing of your present
_homme de chambre_ beyond the recommendation of my Chuma, who is
amiable to the verge of imbecility. If he disappears, let me know
at once, for I really want to make you comfortable and contented in
what I know must seem to you little more than a beautiful
wilderness peopled by ambitious barbarians. But wait till you know
San Francisco!

ISABEL.

Gwynne smiled at the form of address and the expressions of concern in
his welfare; but he scowled twice over the admonition to be plastic and
American.

"I'll be what I damn please," he announced, aloud, much to the surprise
of Imura Kisaburo Hinomoto who entered at the moment with his shaving
water.

Nevertheless, when his visitors arrived, late in the afternoon, his
natural courtesy, and the reflection that he had not come to America to
fail, induced him to receive the four with something like warmth, and to
place his cigars and whiskey--he already knew better than to offer them
tea--at their immediate disposal. They sat on the porch facing the
mountain, and for a few moments the conversation was confined to the
weather and the scenery, giving Gwynne an opportunity to observe his
guests with some minuteness. Judge Leslie and young Colton he had
already met, and he liked the former, a pleasant shrewd tactful man, who
was one of the chief ornaments of the northern bar, and universally
admitted to be "dead straight." So "straight," indeed, was he that his
term of judgeship had been brief. He had been carried to the bench on an
independent ticket, but the reform movement subsiding, he could obtain
re-election only by bargaining with political bosses, and this he
refused to do; but after the fashion of the country he retained his
title. He had a loose hairy benignant face with a humorous but
penetrating eye and the usual domelike brow. His body had grown unwieldy
from years and lack of exercise, and his clothes were old-fashioned and,
generally, dusty. He voted the Republican ticket and was not too well
pleased with