He folded and docketed the sheets that showed the monthly profits, and most unusually for him at this busy hour of the morning, sat idly at his desk. The business of his stores here whirled along its course automatically, with Hugh who had been so sedulously trained in his fathers thorough-going school to look after it, and no longer needed his daily supervision. With the income which came to him from years of prudent investment he wanted no more, and he wondered whether the time was come to turn the business into a company. As vendor he would receive a considerable block of shares and yet leave the company with an excellent return for their money. Hugh would probably become general director, and he himself, secure in an ample fortune, would have all his time at his own disposal. Next year, it is true, he would be Mayor of Bracebridge, which would leave him but little leisure, for he had no notion of being anything but a hard-worked head of the towns municipal affairs, but after that he could retire from active life altogether, as far as offices and superintendence went. But he by no means looked forward to a life of well-fed,{68} well-housed idleness; the secret garden should spread its groves, he would live permanently in the busy cultivation of it. But it must spread itself considerably: he must be immersed in its atmosphere and lawns and thickets as thoroughly as, hitherto, he had been immersed in the fortunes of the Stores.When the English party met the train, the lady and one of the gentlemen suggested that they should stand at the side of the road, but Mr. Richardson urged his horse forward and said, "Come on; I have lived fourteen years in China, and know how to manage these people." He rode into the midst of the procession, and was followed by the other gentlemen, or partially so; the lady, in her terror, remained by the side of the road, as she had wished to do at the outset. The guards construed the movements of Mr. Richardson as a direct insult to their master, and fell upon him with their swords. The three men were severely wounded. Mr. Richardson died in less than half an hour, but the others recovered. The lady was not harmed in any way. On the one hand, the Japanese[Pg 160] were a proud, haughty race who resented an insult to their prince, and punished it according to Japanese law and custom. On the other, the foreigners had the technical right, in accordance with the treaty, to go upon the Tokaido; but they offered a direct insult to the people in whose country they were, and openly showed their contempt for them. A little forbearance, and a willingness to avoid trouble by refraining from visiting the Tokaido, as requested by the Japanese authorities, would have prevented the sad occurrence.The road wound among the fields where the rice was growing luxuriantly, and where now and then they found beans and millet, and other[Pg 165] products of Japanese agriculture. The cultivation was evidently of the most careful character, as the fields were cut here and there with little channels for irrigation; and there were frequent deposits of fertilizing materials, whose character was apparent to the nose before it was to the eye. In some places, where the laborers were stooping to weed the plants, there was little more of them visible than their broad sun-hats; and it did not require a great stretch of the imagination to believe they were a new kind of mushroom from Brobdingnagian gardens. Hills like sharply rounded cones rose from each side of the narrow valley they were descending; and the dense growth of wood with which the most of them were covered made a marked contrast to the thoroughly cleared fields. The boys saw over, and over, and over again the pictures they had often seen on Japanese fans and boxes and wondered if they were realities. They had already learned that the apparently impossible pictures we find in Japanese art are not only possible, but actual; but they had not yet seen so thorough a confirmation of it as on this day's ride.CHAPTER XI
