Tiny square tables of black lacquer were disposed along three sides of the room, one for each guest. They were but four inches high and on the floor behind each lay a thin, flat _zabuton_ or cushion of brocade. The bowing _geisha_ in wonderful rainbow _kimono_ who awaited them might have stepped from the temple stage at Mukojima. These pointed to the tables with inviting smiles: "Plee shee down!" they said in unison. "I never _could_ 'shee down' gracefully when any one is looking!" complained Patricia, as she tucked her small feet under her on the kneeling-cushion. "_Banzai!_" commented Voynich, setting his monocle. "You have practised before a mirror!" He collapsed beside her with a groan. "I shall be reincarnated an accordion!" "Count," said Patricia plaintively, "no bouquets, please. I know when you are stringing me." He looked blank and the Japanese officer hastily produced a lavender note-book and a gold pencil. "That is a new one," he said. "I must--what is it?--ah yes! I must _nail_ it. Excuse me. I write it in my swear-album." "The Viscount is learning American slang," Patricia informed Barbara. "One of these days you must tell him some of the very latest." He looked across with gravely twinkling eyes. "I shall be--ah--tickle to die!" he said. "It is my specialty. Nex' year I become Professor in Slang Literature at the Imperial University." The meal began merrily. Barbara sat on Daunt's left, with one of the _attachés_ next her. Baroness Stroloff was on Daunt's other hand. Barbara remembered it afterward as a meal of elfish daintiness--of warm, pungent, wine-like liquor in blue porcelain bottles, of food of strange look and cloying taste, highly colored and seasoned, in a hundred tiny red and black lacquer dishes that carried her back to her doll-days, with covers patterned in gold, served by prostrating _geisha_ whose _kimono_ were woven with violet Fujis, winged dragons and marvelous exotic blossoms. Daunt pointed to a dish which had just been set before her. "You must try the _hasu-no-renkon_," he said. "That's cooked lotos-root. It's nearly as good as it looks." "How do you ever remember the names!" "Oh, it's quite easy to talk Japanese," he replied recklessly. "There are only fifty syllables in the language, and any way you string them together it means something or other. It doesn't matter whether it's the right thing or not, if you just bow and smile. There are seventeen ways of drawing in your breath which are a lot more important than what you say!" "What disgraceful nonsense! What is that pink thing?" "Raw bonito. The refuge of dyspeptics. Voynich, over there, eats nothing else at home, they say. The variegated compound is _kuchitori_. It's made of sugared chestnuts, leeks and pickled fish. May I compliment you on the way you handle your chopsticks? At my first Japanese dinner I bit one in two. Isn't Baroness Stroloff stunning, by the way!"