for me below;--I wish, in short, I wish many things, my dear little
dollies, which I will mention by degrees and with due deliberation,
when I shall have had time to assemble the necessary words. But, the
more I look at you the more uneasy I feel as to what my _fiancée_ of
to-morrow may be like. Almost pretty, I grant you, you are,--in virtue
of quaintness, delicate hands, miniature feet, but ugly after all, and
absurdly small. You look like ouistitis, like little china ornaments,
like I don't know what. I begin to understand that I have arrived at
this house at an ill-chosen moment. Something is going on which does
not concern me, and I feel that I am in the way.

From the beginning I might have guessed as much, notwithstanding the
excessive politeness of my welcome; for I remember now, that while
they were taking off my boots downstairs, I heard a murmuring chatter
overhead, then a noise of panels moved quickly along their grooves,
evidently to hide from me something I was not intended to see; they
were improvising for me the apartment in which I now am--just as in
menageries they make a separate compartment for some beasts when the
public is admitted.

Now I am left alone while my orders are being executed, and I listen
attentively, squatted like a Buddha on my black velvet cushion, in the
midst of the whiteness of the walls and mats.

Behind the paper partitions, worn-out voices, seemingly numerous, are
talking in low tones. Then rises the sound of a guitar, and the song
of a woman, plaintive and gentle in the echoing sonority of the bare
house, in the melancholy of the rainy weather.

What one can see through the wide-open verandah is very pretty, I will