The Motor Maids in Fair Japan | Page 6

and curling, too, causes much admiration. You are very different from the Japanese."
Again Nancy felt flattered.
"I really believe I am rather pretty," she thought. What she said was: "You are very kind, Mr. Ito, but I am sure I think the Japanese girls are just as pretty as American girls. Little Onoye, our maid, is charming. She is a perfect picture."
For the rest of the day, however, vain Nancy was enveloped in a rosy cloud of self-satisfaction. It was pleasing to be admired and still more pleasing to feel that the admiration was justified.
The truth is, that admiration was quite as stimulating to Nancy as it is to the rest of us, and when she realized that the young Japanese had fallen an instant victim to her charms, she felt some pardonable pride in the power of her blue eyes and bright curls.
By this time the others had returned to the pagoda-like summer house.
"Come, Nancy, dear," floated Miss Campbell's voice across the garden. She was too careful a chaperone to permit one of her girls to wander at dusk with a strange young Japanese.
Nancy quickened her pace. Nevertheless, she felt a little impatient with all these restrictions.
"I am almost eighteen. I suppose I might be trusted to look after myself occasionally," she thought with some irritation.
"May I not see you again to-morrow, Miss Brown?" Yoritomo was asking.
"I am afraid you'll have to ask Miss Campbell."
"It is now almost the American dinner hour," he went on thoughtfully, looking at his watch. "If I should be strolling to-morrow at this time down by the bridge, it would be very pleasant. We could have a few words together."
"But--" began Nancy, and the voices of her friends interrupted her.
They had paused near a great bush of azaleas in full bloom. Almost over their heads the silver crescent of the new moon hung poised like a fairy scimitar. It was exquisite and unreal. Nancy felt somehow out of place in the lovely picture, while the young Japanese, standing intense and rigid beside her, was as much a part of the Oriental garden as the stone lantern and the fragrant spice bush near the path. Even his blue serge European suit seemed to have lost its values in the deepening shadows.
"If I come every day to see you, there would be great comment," he said in a low voice. "But often I shall wait on the bridge about this time."
It was only a little time ago that Nancy's mother had lengthened her little daughter's skirts from shoe tops to ankles. The line of the old hem was still noticeable in some of her summer frocks. Just six months since, Nancy had tucked up the bunch of curls into a Psyche knot and transformed the ribbon bow into a velvet bandeau. Since she had been old enough to go to parties she had had boy admirers who had said sweet things to her. But this was quite different, and Nancy, almost eighteen, and capable of looking after herself, felt suddenly frightened.
"I--I must hurry," she said, and turning she ran as fast as she could up the garden path nearly colliding with Billie and Mary who had come to look for her.
"Why, Nancy, you are chasing along like a scared rabbit," cried Billie. "Has anything happened to you?"
"Oh, no. I thought we had better run because it was so late," she answered breathlessly, while Yoritomo, following close behind, calm and collected, bade them a formal good night and hurried over to the summer house to pay his respects to Miss Campbell and her cousin.
Nancy decided that night not to tell Billie, her intimate confidante, what the Japanese had said to her. The walls were too thin, she thought. Besides, she was curious to know if Yoritomo would be on the bridge the next afternoon. Just how she intended to find this out, she had not then decided.
CHAPTER III.
SHOPPING IN JINRIKSHAS.
"I feel very much like a baby in a baby carriage," observed Miss Helen Campbell as Mr. Campbell almost lifted her into the graceful little two-wheeled vehicle. "And is that poor soul going to turn into a horse and pull me?" she demanded.
"You aren't such a heavy load," replied her cousin. "I doubt if the S. P. C. A. would get excited over it. I am only sorry you have to be alone, but I suppose those four inseparables are paired off as usual. Billie with Nancy and Mary with Elinor."
"Indeed, I much prefer to be alone," said Miss Campbell. "Then I can hold on with both hands in case I am upset backwards."
"You never will be. They will treat you like spun glass. You will take good care of the ladies, Komatsu," he said to the 'riksha man who, leaning against the garden wall, resembled a bronze figure,