Barbara pushed open the bamboo gate of the temple garden, then paused. The recluse with whom she had talked yesterday sat a little way inside, while before him, in an attitude of deepest attention, stood the diminutive figure on the huge clogs whose morning acquaintance she had made from her window. Thorn was looking at him earnestly with his great myopic eye, through a heavy glass mounted with a handle like a lorgnette. "My son," he said. "Why will you persist in eating _amé_, when I have taught you the classics and the true divinity of the universe? It is too sweet for youthful teeth. One of these days you will be carried to a dentist, an esteemed person with horrible tools, prior to the removal of a small hell, containing several myriads of lost souls, from the left side of your lower jaw!" Barbara's foot grated on a pebble and he rose with a startled quickness. The youngster bent double, his face preternaturally grave. Thorn thrust the glass into his sleeve and smiled. "I am experimenting on this oriental raw material," he said, "to illustrate certain theories of my own. Ishikichi-_San_, though a slave to the sweetmeat dealer, is a learned infant. He can write forty Chinese characters and recite ten texts of Mencius. He also knows many damnable facts about figures which they teach in school. He has just propounded a question that Confucius was too wise to answer: 'Why is poverty?' Not being so wise as the Chinese sage, I attempted its elucidation. Thus endeth our lesson to-day, Ishikichi. _Sayonara_." He bowed. The child ducked with a jerky suddenness that sent his round, battered hat rolling at Barbara's feet. She picked it up and set it on the shaven head. "Oh!" she said humbly. "I beg your pardon, Ishikichi! I put the rim right in your eye!" "Don't menshum it," he returned solemnly. "I got another." He stalked to the gate, faced about, bobbed over again and disappeared. Barbara looked after him smilingly. "Is Ishikichi in straitened circumstances? Or is his bent political economy?" "His father has been ill for a long time," Thorn replied. "He keeps a shop, and in some way the child has heard that they will have to give it up. It troubles him, for he can't imagine existence without it." "What a pity! I would be so glad to--do you think I could give them something?" He shook his head. "After you have been here a while, you will find that simple charity in Japan is not apt to be a welcome thing." "I am beginning to understand already," she said, as they walked along the stepping-stones, "that these gentle-mannered people do not lack the sterner qualities. Yet how they grace them! The iron-hand is here, but it has the velvet glove. Courtesy and kindness seem almost a religion with them." "More," he answered. "This is the only country I have seen in the world whose people, when I walk the street, do not seem to notice that I am disfigured!"