Well, he was not going to ask twice after one refusal of his favours, but, as the next week went by, he found the sir and the dropped eyes altogether intolerable. These absolutely impersonal relationships were mysteriously worrying. She had shown herself a compatriot of the secret garden, and now she had retreated into the shell of the secretary again. This week the weather turned suddenly cold, and since there was no fireplace in her room, he invited her to sit at the table by the window in his, which was close to the central-heating hot-water pipes. A certain employer-sense of pride had come to his aid, and now he hardly ever glanced at her. But one day the whole card-house of this pride fell softly on the table, just as he took his hat and stick after the days work.Such a scolding as I had before church from{54} my housekeeper, he said, because I didnt eat the buttered scones she sent me up for tea. I know some one who would have polished them off, eh, John?
FORE:"I was so anxious about you," she replied, with feeling, and then broke into a quizzical laugh."My father? no; but he's prejudiced! That's one of the things I can never understand--why nearly all the girls I know have such prejudiced fathers."
FORE:"The Japanese tea is brought from the country to the seaports in large boxes. It is partially dried when it is picked, but not enough to[Pg 267] preserve it for a long sea-voyage. When it gets here, it is delivered to the large establishments that make a business of shipping teas to America; and let me say, by the way, that nearly all the tea of Japan that is exported goes to America, and hardly any of it to any other country. When we went into the warehousethey call it a 'go-down,' from a Hindostanee wordthey showed us a room where there were probably a hundred bushels of tea in a great pile on the floor. Men were at work mixing it up with shovels, and the clerk who showed us around said that they spread all the tea out in layers, one over the other, and then mixed them up. He said it was a very difficult job to have the teas properly mixed, so that the samples should be perfectly even.
ONE:Youre naughty too, he said. This is play-time. And now theres something else I want to talk about. You ladies are the queens of your homes: dont you think you could persuade Mr Keeling not to think me the thin edge of the Pope, so to speak?
TWO:
Very stupid, Mamma dear, she said. I couldnt dream of telling you all we said to each other.It seemed to Mrs Keeling that this was not being clever but stupid. She felt that it was a designed diversion to distract her thoughts. She was being pearl-pendanted again without the pearl, and was not going to be put off like that.VIEW FROM SURUGA DAI IN TOKIO. VIEW FROM SURUGA DAI IN TOKIO.