Then came a long pause, while we asked all the questions that occurred to us about _kimono_ and _hakama_, and swords and etiquette; and then our lunch, a whole lacquered trayful of bowls for each one of us, with all the courses served together, and all irretrievably and, to us, inexplicably mixed. I pass the hot soup in a lacquered bowl, and the hot rice in a china one, but the rest--a golden bream on a pale blue plate set round with oranges in jelly; slices of pink raw fish, and a design in brown seaweed and green roots; a deep bowl of pale yellow custard, its surface ruffled with silver fishes, oriental whitebait, and its depths filled with bamboo shoots and lily bulbs and other surprises; and one dish, a triumph of design and colour, where an oval slab of pounded fish, white as snow, rested against a green mound of preserved chestnuts, while in front, arranged in a curving crescent like the tail of a comet, were purple roots, brown ginger, and slices of a red radish. And all this you eat as you please, a bit here, and a bit there, now a drink of salt soup, then a mouthful of sweet chestnut; custard, vegetables, fish, sweets, with relays of rice for bread, and _saké_ for wine, paper napkins, and withal two penholders to eat with, and your Japanese dinner is complete. Having tried everything with the greatest perseverance, and wriggled our chopsticks until our hands were as tired as our toes, we gave in and rested from our labours. The little maid, rosier than ever, removed the trays of food, and brought in bowls of oranges and dried persimmon. At this moment there was a rustling of screens, and a dear, little old lady with shaven eyebrows and blackened teeth slid into the room, and instantly went down on her knees, and putting out her hands bowed her head right down on to them. “This is my aunt,” said the professor, “a real old-fashioned woman--there are not many left nowadays--who blackens her teeth and shaves her eyebrows.” The little old lady laughed, and made many polite speeches, asking after our “honourable healths” and our “august appetites.” At every word she made another bow, until I felt as if I really must get down on my knees and hit my forehead against the ground as well. Luckily the professor, after a moment’s consultation, suggested we should see the house, and we all got up. The little old lady was on her feet in a twinkling, but our half-dead limbs sent pins and needles up our legs, as we stumbled on to them and awkwardly walked away.