"Long, John Luther - Purple-Eyes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Long John Luther)

Purple-Eyes, by John Luther Long

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Purple-Eyes
by John Luther Long, 1898, from "Madame Butterfly"



IЧTHE FEVER JAPONICA
GARLAND was charmed with his reception. Before he could open his head (in his
own perhaps too picturesque phrase) the two girls had buried their delightful
noses in the mats, and were bobbing vividly up and down, sibilating honorifics
at him in the voice and manner used only to personages. The mother joined them
an instant later, making a phalanx, and she was nearly as beautiful, and quite
as graceful, as her daughters. So that at one moment he would have presented to
him the napes of three pretty necks, and at the next, with a conjurer's quick
change, three pairs of eyes that smiled always, and three mouths that did their
best (which was very well indeed) to assist the eyes. At first, I say, he was
charmed, then a little bewildered, then bewitched. And perhaps it was well that
his conversation-book was the only thing about him that spoke Japanese; for
Garland's vocabulary, even when it was fairly accurate, had grown indiscreet
since coming to Japan.
He perceived, however, by a surreptitious glance at the conversation-book when
the napes of the necks were in view, that they were addressing him as
"Augustness" and "Excellency," and that the mother was insisting that he should
take immediate possession of her "miserable" house and its contents. He wondered
dreamilyЧand he drifted into dreams with the most curious easeЧwhether the girls
would be included.
Finally he began to feel it his duty to be tired of this fawning, as his
refluent American democracy insisted upon naming itЧthough, personally, he liked
itЧand all the clever pretences of the Japanese. He sat bolt upright and
frowned. But the charming kotowing did not in the least abate. He had heard
somewhere that the only way to stop this sort of thing short of apoplexy was to
compete in it.
He tried to reach the mats with his own nose. It seemed easy, but it was a
disaster. There is a trick in it. He plunged forward helplessly almost into the
lap of one of his hostesses. Garland sat up, with their joint assistance, very
red in the face, but quite cheerful; for though the mother looked greatly
pained, the girls were smiling like two Japanese angels. (The phrase is again
Garland's: there are no Japanese angels.) Garland had the instant intelligence
to perceive that this had at once stopped the kotowing, and precipitated a
piquant intimacy.
"I say," said he, idiomatically, "I nearly broke my neck trying to say howdy-do
in your way. Now won't you kindly say it in mine, without the least danger to
life and limb?"
He held out his hand invitingly, and the one on his right went into debate as to
which one to give him. She knew there was some foreign etiquette in the matter.
"In doubt, shake both," said Garland, doing it.
The one on his left emulated her sister to the last particular (the mother had
retired for refreshments), but he noticed that the hands she gave him were long