Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/190

with short, staccato bursts of merriment, the Japanese discreetly, putting his hand over his mouth.

Finally one afternoon as they were leaving the laboratory together and were about to go their separate ways at the corner of the Dorotheenstrasse, Takagawa bowed ceremoniously before the officer and, painfully translating in his mind from the Chinese book of etiquette into Japanese and thence into the harsh vagaries of the foreign tongue, begged him to tie the strings of his traveling cloak and deign to set his honorable feet in the miserable dwelling of Takagawa Takamori, there to partake of mean food and entirely worthless hospitality.

Baron von Eschingen smiled, showing his fine, white teeth, clicked his heels, and accepted; and the following evening found the curious couple in Takagawa's room: the former in all the pale-blue and silver glory of his regimentals, the latter, having shed his European clothes, wrapped in a cotton crêpe robe embroidered on the left shoulder with a single pink chrysanthemum, queer and hieratic—the mon, the coat of arms of his clan.

To tell the truth, the baron had brought with him a healthy, meat-craving German appetite, and he felt disappointed when all his host offered him was a plate of paper-thin rice wafers and some very pale, very tasteless tea served in black celadon cups. His disappointment changed to embarrassment when the Japanese, before filling the cups, went through a lengthy ceremony, paying exaggerated compliments in halting German, extolling his guest's nobility, and laying stress on his own frightful worthlessness.

"And the funny little beggar did it with all the dignity of a hidalgo," the baron said the next morning