the floor.  Below the two tiers of boxes, the pit appeared like a gigantic checker-board divided into square compartments by partitions about a foot high.  In each compartment squatted six people.  Running from the rear of the house to the stage was a slightly raised walk three feet broad to be used by the actors as an exit.  The stalls were crowded with men and women and children.  Here and there were groups of geishas or dancing girls.  Their rich apparel made bright spots of color in the scene.  The children ran about with perfect freedom, up and down the aisles at the sides and in and out of the stalls, eating sweetmeats and visiting their friends.  And there was scarcely a grown person in the entire audience of Japanese who was not smoking, for women as well as men smoke in Japan:  one pinch of tobacco in a short pipe, one puff, a little whiff of smoke inhaled and the operation is over.  Before the curtain rose, the Nesan flew busily from one box to the other with cushions and sweetmeats, baskets of oranges and boxes of sweet pickled black beans.  Presently came the sound of two blocks of wood striking together.  Then the curtain rose and the audience settled itself for three hours of the most intense enjoyment.  The play was a Japanese legend and the actors picturesque and dramatic, but if all the greatest actors in the world had combined to give the performance, Miss Campbell could not have maintained her cramped position a minute longer than two hours.

“I am sure my limbs will refuse their office, Duncan,” she whispered.  “If this goes on much longer, I shall have to be carried from the theater like a helpless paralytic.”

“Buxton, don’t you think we’ve had enough?” suggested Mr. Campbell, and the bachelor, glad to stretch his own cramped legs, took the hint and gave the signal for departure.

Once more they were in the ’rikshas, only this time Nancy found herself seated by Yoritomo and Billie and Nicholas had paired off in the same way.  Miss Campbell was not sure that she approved of this change.

“In my day,” she remarked to her cousin, “young ladies never rode alone in buggies with young men.”

“But they aren’t buggies, Cousin,” he answered good-naturedly.

“They are, all but the horse,” said Miss Campbell.

But they had arrived at the gate of the tea house before the argument could proceed and were presently rolling through a garden enclosed by high walls.  It was a fairyland of a place, even more beautiful than the Campbells’ own garden, filled with brilliant beds of flowers and here and there a small grove of stunted pine trees.

Through the door of a tea house, low roofed and brown (houses are not painted in Japan), rushed a score of musumes (maids), pink-cheeked and bare-footed, who greeted the guests with low bows and removed their shoes.  There also was their own particular Nesan, owner of that particular tea house, who bowed gracefully and said in Japanese: