“Monsieur Kangourou, who is that young lady over there, in dark blue?”

“Over there, Monsieur?  She is called Mademoiselle Chrysantheme.  She came with the others you see here; she is only here as a spectator.  She pleases you?” said he, with eager suddenness, espying a way out of his difficulty.  Then, forgetting all his politeness, all his ceremoniousness, all his Japanesery, he takes her by the hand, forces her to rise, to stand in the dying daylight, to let herself be seen.  And she, who has followed our eyes and begins to guess what is on foot, lowers her head in confusion, with a more decided but more charming pout, and tries to step back, half-sulky, half-smiling.

“It makes no difference,” continues M. Kangourou, “it can be arranged just as well with this one; she is not married either, Monsieur!”

She is not married!  Then why didn’t the idiot propose her to me at once instead of the other, for whom I have a feeling of the greatest pity, poor little soul, with her pearl-gray dress, her sprig of flowers, her now sad and mortified expression, and her eyes which twinkle like those of a child about to cry.

“It can be arranged, Monsieur!” repeats Kangourou again, who at this moment appears to me a go-between of the lowest type, a rascal of the meanest kind.

Only, he adds, we, Yves and I, are in the way during the negotiations.  And, while Mademoiselle Chrysantheme remains with her eyelids lowered, as befits the occasion, while the various families, on whose countenances may be read every degree of astonishment, every phase of expectation, remain seated in a circle on my white mats, he sends us two into the veranda, and we gaze down into the depths below us, upon a misty and vague Nagasaki, a Nagasaki melting into a blue haze of darkness.

Then ensue long discourses in Japanese, arguments without end.  M. Kangourou, who is laundryman and low scamp in French only, has returned for these discussions to the long formulas of his country.  From time to time I express impatience, I ask this worthy creature, whom I am less and less able to consider in a serious light: 

“Come now, tell us frankly, Kangourou, are we any nearer coming to some arrangement?  Is all this ever going to end?”

“In a moment, Monsieur, in a moment;” and he resumes his air of political economist seriously debating social problems.

Well, one must submit to the slowness of this people.  And, while the darkness falls like a veil over the Japanese town, I have leisure to reflect, with as much melancholy as I please, upon the bargain that is being concluded behind me.

Night has closed in; it has been necessary to light the lamps.

It is ten o’clock when all is finally settled, and M. Kangourou comes to tell me: 

“All is arranged, Monsieur:  her parents will give her up for twenty dollars a month—­the same price as Mademoiselle Jasmin.”