"If I could only talk to him!" Barbara exclaimed. "I want to know the language. Tell me, Patsy--how long did it take you to learn?" "I?" cried Patricia in comical amazement. "Heavens and earth, _I_ haven't learned it! I only know enough to badger the servants. You have to turn yourself inside out to think Japanese, and then stand on your head to talk it." "Never mind, Barbara," said the bishop, looking up from his newspaper. "You can learn it if you insist on it. Haru would be a capital teacher--bless my soul, I believe I forgot to tell you about her!" "Who is Haru?" asked Barbara. "She's a young Japanese girl, the daughter of the old _samurai_ who sold us the land for the Chapel. The family is a fine old one, but of frayed fortune. I was greatly interested in her, chiefly, perhaps, because she is a Christian. She became so with her father's consent, though he is a Buddhist. She isn't of the servant class, of course, but I thought--if you liked--she would make an ideal companion for you while you are learning Tokyo." "I know Haru," said Patricia. "She's a dear! She's as pretty as a picture, and her English is too quaint!" "It would be lovely to have her," Barbara answered. "You're a very thoughtful man, Uncle Arthur. Are you sure she'll want to?" "I'll send her a note and ask her to come to you at the Embassy this evening. Then--all aboard for the Japanese lessons!" "No such wisdom for me, thank you," said Patricia. "I prefer to take mine in through the pores. All the Japanese officials speak English anyway, just as much as the diplomatic corps. By the way, there's Count Voynich, the Servian _Chargé_." She nodded toward the farther end of the carriage where a bored-looking European plaintively regarded the landscape through a monocle. "He's nice," she added reflectively, "but he's a dyspeptic. I caught him one night at a dinner dropping a capsule into his soup. He has a cabinet with three hundred Japanese _nets'kés_--they're the little ivory carvings on the strings of tobacco-pouches. He didn't speak to me for a month once because I said it looked like a dental exhibition. Almost every secretary has a fad, and that's his. Ours has an aëroplane. He practises on it nearly every day on the parade-ground. The pudgy woman in the other corner with a cockatoo in her hat is Mrs. Sturgis, the wife of the big exporter. She wears red French heels and calls her husband 'papa'." Barbara's laughter was infectious. It caught the bishop. It reflected itself even on the demure face of the Japanese girl, and the serious youths opposite giggled openly in sympathy. "I do envy you your first impressions!" exclaimed Patricia. "I've been here so long that I've forgotten mine. It seems perfectly natural now for people to live in houses made of bird-cages and paper napkins, and travel about in grown-up baby-buggies, and to see men walking around with bare legs and oil-skin umbrellas. It's like the sea-shore at home, I suppose--you get used to it."