Bob spent many delightful hours in witnessing these things, and in strolling through the streets, looking into the curio shops, sometimes venturing a discreet purchase. But amid all the merriment there seemed to him to be a something in the air—an undercurrent of seriousness, which was the theme of incessant talk in the hotel smoking-room. Was it to be war? That was the question which was discussed from morning to night. Everybody knew that negotiations were proceeding between the foreign offices at Tokio and St. Petersburg: what was the result to be? Opinion veered this way and that. Russia apparently would not keep her pledges: would Japan fight? What were the rights of the case? Was Russia merely concerned with holding an ice-free port and developing her trade, or was she aiming at aggression and conquest? Was Japan strong enough to enforce unaided what the diplomacy of European powers had failed to accomplish? Would China come to the assistance of her conqueror? Would Britain be involved in the struggle? These and similar questions were canvassed to the point of weariness; and Bob all the time felt that it was talk in the air, for nobody knew. There was no excitement, no mouthings, no boastfulness. The little soldiers in their trim uniforms were not much to be seen in the streets; yet it was not long before Bob learnt that preparations were quietly, unostentatiously, being made to throw vast armies across the Korea Strait; and as to the navy, was not his presence there in itself a proof that the government was determined to have everything at the top of condition should the struggle which many deemed inevitable actually begin? On the second morning after the adventure in the Ueno Park, Bob, having finished breakfast, went to the reading-room to glance at the papers preparatory to his usual stroll. There were illustrated European magazines in plenty with which he was familiar, and a five-weeks’ old copy of the _Times_, which he looked through without much interest, the news being so obviously stale. There was the _Japan Mail_, a little more interesting, in which he was glad to find an account of the last match between the Australians and Warner’s eleven, as well as news of the British doings in Tibet and Somaliland. But having brought himself up to date with those journals in his own tongue, he turned, as he usually did, to the native papers, and stared at them as earnestly as though only assiduous poring was needed to give him a thorough grasp of Japanese. He wished he could read the strange hieroglyphics—some shaped like gridirons, others like miniature barns, others like the little dancing imps drawn by school-boys with a few straight lines on the margins of their grammars. He wondered what meaning lay behind the strangely picturesque tantalizing characters, and sighed as he replaced one of the papers on the table.