* * * * * She could play the koto (the harp), and the piano a little--could the Maid of Miyanoshita. She would play neither for me, but that afternoon she would take me, she said, to hear a friend play the koto--an elderly friend, whom she called, she said, her aunt. Later, she said she had asked another gentleman also. Now when I spoke once of the musical click of the getas, the Happy Exile had told me that the wearers often chose them, taking only such pairs as pleased the individual ear. The statement has since been much laughed at, so I asked the Maid of Miyanoshita for confirmation. She at least did not choose her getas for their sound. "But," she said, "the Japanese say the getas go-- "'Kara-ko, kara-ko, kara-ko!'" The notes she gave were the notes I had heard on the stone platforms of every station between Tokio and Yokohama, and going straightway to the piano I found those notes to be F and D in the scale of F Minor. Let the laugh proceed. The Happy Exile possibly might say that those notes were the prominent ones in some old national song, and that the geta-makers had been unconsciously reproducing them ever since. * * * * * It was raining. Alack and alas! the Little Maid carried an American umbrella--impious trail of the Saxon! while the Other Man and I bore picturesque Japanese ones that would have given the crowning touch to her, but looked simply ridiculous over us. Thus we went to meet the exquisite courtesy and genuine kindness of a real Japanese home. Two kotos were played for us, while the players sang "Wind Among the Pines," and the tale of the fairies who fell in love with the fisherman. "Do you like Japanese music?" said the Little Maid to the Other Man. "Yes," he said promptly, lying like a gentleman. "Don't you think it is rather monotonous?" she asked. "Well--um--um. Don't you like Japanese music?" he said, taking refuge. "Well," she said, "I like your music better, I think. It is more lively and has more variety." Then we had tea, and after tea of the kind usually served in Japan, the husband, a fierce Samurai in the pictures he showed us, but now a genial, broad-smiling doctor of the old Japanese school, insisted that we should take bowls of powdered tea which he prepared with his own hands. In the drinking of this the Little Maid instructed us. We were to take the bowl, the left hand underneath, the fingers of the right hand clasped about it, lift it to the forehead, a movement of unspoken thanks, and very gently, so as not to suggest that the tea needed to be dissolved, were to roll the tea around in the bowl three times and then take one drink--making much noise, meanwhile, with the lips to show how much we enjoyed it. "That is very vulgar in your country," interrupted the Little Maid, "is it not so?" "Well," I said, "lots of people do it, but not for the reason of courtesy."