"Of course. How stupid of me!" She sat suddenly upright. "Of all _things_! There's our 'Dandy'!" She pointed to a tiny Pomeranian on the seat of the last _rick'sha_. "I wondered why number-three boy was washing him so hard this morning! It's a mercy he didn't see us, or he'd have broken up the procession. Please take note that he's the tail-end--which shows my own unofficial insignificance." "There's a tourist at the hotel," said the Ambassador, "who should have seen this. I was there the other day and I overheard her speaking to one of the Japanese clerks. She said she had seen everything but a funeral, and she wanted him to instruct her guide to take her to one. The clerk said: 'I am too sorry, Madam, but this is not the season for funerals.'" The horses trotted on, to drop to a walk, presently, on a brisk incline. High, slanting retaining walls were on either side, and double rows of cherry-trees, whose interlacing branches wove a roof of soft pink bloom. Along the road were many people; _inkyo_--old men who no longer labored, and _ba-San_--old women whom age had relieved from household cares--bent and withered and walking with staves or leaning on the arms of their daughters, who bore babies of their own strapped to their backs; children clattering on loose wooden clogs; youths sauntering with _kimono'd_ arms thrown, college-boy fashion, about each other's shoulders; a troop of young girls in student _hakama_--skirts of deep purple or garnet--laughing and chatting in low voices or airily swinging bundles tied in colored _furoshiki_. Midway the wall opened into a miniature park filled with trees, with a small lake and a _Shinto_ monument. "Why, there's little Ishikichi," said Patricia. "I never saw him so far from home before. Isn't that a queer-looking man with him!" The solemn six-year-old, Barbara's window acquaintance of the morning, was trotting from the inclosure, his small fingers clutching the hand of a foreigner. The latter was of middle age. His coat was a heavy, double-breasted "reefer." His battered hat, wide-brimmed and soft-crowned, was a joke. But his linen was fresh and good and his clumsy shoes did not conceal the smallness and shapeliness of his feet. He was lithe and well built, and moved with an easy swing of shoulder and a step at once quick and graceful. His back was toward them, but Barbara could see his long, gray-black hair, a square brow above an aquiline profile at once bold and delicate, and a drooping mustache shot with gray. Many people seemed to regard him, but he spoke to no one save his small companion. His manner, as he bent down, had something caressing and confiding.