“No,” said the artist; “you see the ten (point) there is wrong.  It is ill-formed.  It should be written thus.”

Shaking back his kimono sleeve—­he wore a sea-blue cotton kimono, as befitted his years—­and with a little flourish of his wrist, like a golfer about to make his stroke, he traced off the new version of the character on the white paper.

Perched on his veranda, with his head on one side he looked very like the marabout stork, as you may see him at the Zoo, that raffish bird with the folds in his neck, the stained glaucous complexion, the bald head and the brown human eye.  He had the same look of respectable rascality.  The younger Fujinami showed signs of becoming exactly like him, although the parentage was by adoption only.  He was not yet so bald.  His black hair was patched with grey in a piebald design.  The skin of the throat was at present merely loose, it did not yet hang in bags.

“And this Asa San?” remarked the elder after a pause; “what is to be thought of her?  Last night I became drunk, as my habit is, and I could not see those people well.”

“She is not loud-voiced and bold like foreign women.  Indeed, her voice and her eyes are soft.  Her heart is very good, I think.  She is timid, and in everything she puts her husband first.  She does not understand the world at all; and she knows nothing about money.  Indeed, she is like a perfect Japanese wife.”

“Hm!  A good thing, and the husband?”

“He is a soldier, an honourable man.  He seemed foolish, or else he is very cunning.  The English people are like that.  They say a thing.  Of course, you think it is a lie.  But no, it is the truth; and so they deceive.”

“Ma, mendo-kusai (indeed, smelly-troublesome!) And why has this foreigner come to Japan?”

“Ito says he has come to learn about the money.  That means, when he knows he will want more.”

“How much do we pay to Asa San?”

“Ten per cent.”

“And the profits last year on all our business came to thirty seven and a half per cent.  Ah!  A fine gain.  We could not borrow from the banks at ten per cent.  They would want at least fifteen, and many gifts for silence.  It is better to fool the husband, and to let them go back to England.  After all, ten per cent is a good rate.  And we want all our money now for the new brothels in Osaka.  If we make much money there, then afterwards we can give them more.”

“Ito says that if the Englishman knows that the money is made in brothels, he will throw it all away and finish.  Ito thinks it would be not impossible to send the Englishman back to England, and to keep Asa here in Japan.”

The old man looked up suddenly, and for once his jaw stopped chewing.

“That would be best of all,” he exclaimed.  “Then indeed he is honourable and a great fool.  Being an Englishman, it is possible.  Let him go back to England.  We will keep Asa.  She too is a Fujinami; and, even though she is a woman, she can be useful to the family.  She will stay with us.  She would not like to be poor.  She has not borne a baby to this foreigner, and she is young.  I think also our Sada can teach her many things.”