With bird-like cries the rickshaw men turn under an arched gateway into a little court-yard paved with stones. The wheels rattle as in a hollow vault and come to a sudden halt. Straightway there is an answering bustle and the shuffling of many little feet along the polished floors to the entrance of the tea-house, and many little brown maidens kneel there and smile and gurgle a welcome. There the shoes of the visitor come off, and if any man has forgotten the first instruction Kipling gave, that the visitor to Japan should take with him at least one beautiful pair of socks, there is considerable embarrassment for him. You are led up a narrow stairway, each step of polished wood, and into a big chamber covered with mats--the wall toward the interior made of beautiful screens, the other wall opening on the outer air to a balcony. At the other end of the room from the entrance a single beautiful vase stands on a little platform, and in that vase is one single beautiful flower. In front of that vase is the seat of honor, and the guests are arranged in front of it seated on thin cushions on the floor. Straightway little nesan--serving-girls--carry in little trays, a box filled with ashes in which glow tiny bars of charcoal, a little ash-receiver of bamboo, a bottle of _sake_, and dainty little bowls without handles for drinking-cups. Now one by one the brilliant little stars of the drama appear. A geisha girl glides in at the entrance, another and another, and in a row sink to their knees and bow their foreheads to the mat. Rising, they approach ten steps and kneel again. Once more they approach shuffling along the floor in their socks of spotless white (the big toe in a separate pocket) walking modestly pigeon-toed that the flaps of their brilliant kimonos may part not at all, and then they are bowing in front of the little trays where they sit smiling and ready to serve you with food and drink. There for the first time we saw Kamura--Kamura-san you must say, if you would be polite. She was pretty, and dainty, and graceful, and her years were only fourteen, which by our computation, would be thirteen only, since the Japanese child is supposed to be a year old when born. She spoke English very well, for she had lived in Shanghai once where she had played with American children. She was an Eurasian--that is a half-caste--but that was a secret which she told a few in confidence, for you could not tell it from her face, and the fact would be no little obstacle to the success of her career as a geisha girl. Straightway little Kamura-san was the favorite of the dinner party, with the women as well as with the men, and she acted as interpreter and said many quaint, shrewd, unexpected things. The women petted and caressed her, and the men doubtless would have liked to do the same, but that is not a Japanese custom. She turned to one man of the party, and she spoke slowly and with no shading of intonation whatever: