The _kurumaya_, uplifted with pride, tore along at the top of their speed in the exact centre of the road, and the traffic scattered before us. We did not run, we flew, over the stone bridge built just where the canal ends and the lagoon begins, up the long, long street parallel to the lagoon, then a dive to the left over a canal bridge, a dash through a green turning, another dive, another bridge over another canal, and with the most imposing clatter we tore into a gravel court in front of the inn, and pulled up short in the recess of the entrance. In an instant the _shōji_ slipped aside and three women in dark blue _kimono_ were bowing, knees and forehead, on the polished wood. We had reached the inn at Matsué. The three figures got up, as we left our shoes on the long thick block of rough-hewn granite which forms the front door-step between the gravel and the house, and led us in a long procession to an open matted space in the garden. This was our room. It had but half a wall, where the _tokonoma_ stood; the other half was open _shōji_, leading to the house, and two square pillars at the corners supported the roof. Here we all subsided upon the kneeling-cushions in the strictest order of precedence, based on nearness to the _tokonoma_. Our black squirrel of a landlord and the amiable Carker of the Prefecture, who had also arrived, sat on their heels with great ceremony, though the “foreign” clothes of our friend from the Prefecture got sadly in his way, and then the interchange of polite phrases began. It was exhaustive, for they were, oh! so ceremonious, and although two little girls with goggle eyes fanned us vigorously, and the blue waters of the lagoon filled what should have been wall in front of us, we grew hotter and hotter. Then the plain daughter of our comely landlady brought in an immense white meat-dish of railway-buffet thickness, and set it down with conscious pride before her mother. It contained piles of chipped ice, which the comely landlady shovelled into miniature tumblers, the size of dolls’ tooth-glasses, with an imposing iron ladle. She sifted over it white sugar from a pie-dish, and the plain daughter presented it to the company. The drink of the Gods themselves was never more divine! Though like Sam Weller’s orthography, which “varied according to the taste and fancy of the speller,” you can eat this drink or you can drink it. Either way is inelegant, but both are delicious. It was only by relays of this amphibious refreshment, which went on as long as there was anything besides a large pool of water in the meat-dish, that the polite phrases flowed, on our part at least. At last etiquette, even Japanese etiquette, was satisfied, and our amiable friend from the Prefecture bowed himself away. The plain daughter removed the meat-dish, not resisting to tell us it was “foreign” as she did so, and retired. And we lay out to cool upon the matting.