She was a little bent old lady, with the courtly politeness of a thousand Grandisons refined to a subtle essence, and she gave lessons in flower arrangement. The close-cropped grey hair gathered into a slide behind told its own tale of widowhood, and the withered careworn face its story of work and want. The _shōji_ were shut, and the light through the rice-paper panes sent a warmed white light into the room that knew no colour, a light as though one sat inside a luminous mist, or in the heart of the plum-blossoms. A passionless, lifeless light which was simply light. And the little old lady laughed again. “There is much to learn,” I said, stopping to watch her bending the warmed fir branches over the _hibachi_ always to the exact curve, never too near or too far, and mine snapped at the first touch. She handed me another branch in place of the one I had broken, and watched while I wedged it into the cleft bamboo stick with little chips of wood. “Very much,” she said. “It takes three years of learning for the pupil and seven for the teacher. And the _Ijin San_ has had four lessons.” The fifth and last branch being successfully wedged into line, I got on to my knees to admire the effect, while Arabella, from her camp-stool in the corner--she considered it lowering to sit on the floor--bridled. “Oh, the _Japanese_,” she said; “but any European could learn in half a dozen lessons.” The little old lady bowed, letting her forehead almost touch the ground, as she sat on her heels on the kneeling-cushion. “The august stranger----” she began, when I interrupted. The contemplation of my five branches of fir, two curving to the left and three to the right, had not filled me with any satisfaction. They wobbled. All their curves were wrong, and the five stems, instead of being hidden one behind the other, so that the illusion of a single branch growing out of the bronze dish was created and kept, were all distinctly and decidedly visible. “It doesn’t look a bit right,” I said; “but what is the matter?” The task of sticking five branches of fir, already bent to the prescribed curves for me, into a cleft stick had not seemed difficult, especially with three lessons behind me, and I had worked hard and been very confident that morning. With a thousand apologies the little old lady pulled the bronze dish towards her, while Arabella cleared her throat. “In Europe,” she said, in the tone of voice adapted to a kindergarten class--her Japanese voice, “we do not learn such a simple thing, we do it naturally. Every European woman can arrange flowers, and they are flowers” (with a glance at the fir branches in the little old lady’s hand--she was busy correcting) “not trees.”