‘I wonder if they know what they’re doing?’ said Suga in a worried tone. ‘My brother’s so good-natured he’s always being taken advantage of.’ When the eyelids that shaded her gem-like eyes opened and she gazed before her with moist, jet-black eyes her whole body seemed to be suffused with the somber pathos of a beautiful cat.

‘They’re all right,’ said Kin who disliked intensity and wanted to remove herself as quickly as possible from the shadows. ‘You don’t have to worry.’ She waved a hand airily and, taking out a slender pipe from the tobacco case that hung from her sash, lit herself a pipeful of tobacco.

‘What I really wanted to say, though, was that your mother was asking after you, Suga. She was worried about you.’

‘About me? I wonder why?’ Her eyes blurred and she shook her head as though puzzled. For all her adult air there was still something childishly innocent in her face as she struggled to divine her mother’s feelings.

‘Well, I never! Here’s your mother fretting herself, miles away from everything, and you on the spot not turning a hair.’

At the time of her visit to Kin’s house Suga’s mother had really looked sick with worry. She had apparently thought of going to the Shirakawas’ residence and inquiring directly of the mistress, but since that seemed rather tactless she had had the idea of asking Mrs. Kusumi to inquire indirectly how things really stood; and she started to relate her business with an expression so serious that from time to time she even forgot the ingratiating little smile that Kin had never before seen her without.

It had apparently begun with something said by the foreman of the men who tended the Shirakawas’ garden. According to him, two maids from Honjo had come to the Shirakawas’ for an interview that September. They were cousins, it seemed, and the interview had been arranged by a couple called Sonoda who came from the same district of Kyushu as the Shirakawas and were now in the antique business. One of the girls, whom the wife had brought in response to a direct request from Shirakawa for a good-looking maid, had stayed on in the house, while the other had gone home again.