FORE:Once more she is downstairs, in the lane which the dancers are making for their last reel. Two of the gallants have gone out to see the horses, and something keeps them, but there is no need to wait. The fiddle rings a chord! the merry double line straightens down the hall from front door to rear, bang! says the fiddler's foot--"hands round!"--and hands round it is! In the first of the evening they had been obliged to tell the fiddler the names of the dancers, but now he knows them all and throws off his flattering personalities and his overworked rhymes with an impartial rotation and unflagging ardor. Once in a while some one privately gives him a new nickname for the next man "a-comin' down de lane," and as he yawps it out the whole dance gathers new mirth and speed.
FORE:"And three more for friends at home!" Fred added.She spoke to me of that, said Charles, and asked that you would send it to me, to forward to her. But I cant give you her address without her express permission.
FORE:"Not in the least," Doctor Bronson explained. "It is an old custom for married women to blacken their teeth, and formerly it was most rigidly observed; but of late years, since the foreigners came to Japan, it has not been adhered to. The Japanese see that a married woman can get along without having her teeth discolored, and as they are inclined to fall into the customs of Europe, the most progressive of them not only permit, but require, their wives to keep their teeth white."They did not get far from Odiwara before it was necessary to leave the jin-riki-shas and take to the cangos. These were found waiting for them where the road ended and the footpath began, and the boys were delighted at the change from the one mode of conveyance to the other. Doctor Bronson did not seem to share their enthusiasm, as he had been in a cango before and did not care for additional experience. He said that cango travelling was very much like eating crowa man might do it if he tried, but he was not very likely to "hanker after it."
THREE:He hiccoughed. "Let's--s'--see y' orders."
THREE:We left the table all laughing but Gholson. He tried to say something to Harry, which the latter waved away with mock gaiety until on the side veranda we got beyond view of the ladies, when the aide-de-camp reddened angrily and turned his back. As the two lieutenants were lighting cigarettes together, Harry, thinking Gholson had left us, blurted out, "Oh, that's all very well for you to say, Ned, but, damn him, he's not the sort of man that has the right to 'suspicion' me of anything; slang-whanging, backbiting sneak, I know what he's here for.""Exceedingly." The Clockwork man's head nodded up and down with a regular rhythm. "The whole aim of man is convenience." He jerked himself forward a few paces, as though[Pg 81] impelled against his will. "But my present situation, you know, is extremely inconvenient."
