TWO:But they were at the port of Osaka and Kioto, and their thoughts were[Pg 271] turned towards those important cities. There was no difficulty in going there, as the railway was in operation to Osaka, twenty miles, and to Kioto, thirty miles farther on. But Frank was seized with an idea, which he lost no time in communicating to his friends. It was this:Officers and men were at their posts, and the good steamer Oceanic was ready for departure. It was a few minutes before noon.
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TWO:The train started promptly on the advertised time, and the boys found that there were half a dozen trains each way daily, some of them running through, like express trains in other countries, while others were slower, and halted at every station. The line ran through a succession of fields and villages, the former bearing evidence of careful cultivation, while the latter were thickly populated, and gave indications of a good deal of taste in their arrangement. Shade-trees were numerous, and Frank readily accepted as correct the statement he had somewhere read, that a Japanese would rather move his house than cut down a tree in case the one interfered with the other. The rice harvest was nearly at hand, and the fields were thickly burdened with the waving rice-plants. Men were working in the fields, and moving slowly to and fro, and everywhere there was an activity that did not betoken a lazy people. The Doctor explained that if they had been there a month earlier, they would have witnessed the process of hoeing the rice-plants to keep down the weeds, but that now the hoeing was over, and there was little to do beyond keeping the fields properly flooded with water, so that the ripening plants should have the[Pg 104] necessary nourishment. He pointed out an irrigating-machine, which was in operation close to the railway, and the boys looked at it with much interest. A wheel was so fixed in a small trough that when it was turned the water was raised from a little pool, and flowed over the land it was desirable to irrigate. The turning process was performed by a man who stood above the wheel, and stepped from one float to another. The machinery was very simple, and had the merit of cheapness, as its cost could not have been large at the price of labor in Japan."Very likely," the Doctor suggested, "someone has played a trick upon you. Perhaps your own nerves are partly to blame. Men with highly strung nerves like you are very liable toerhallucinations."
FORE:"Life is strife indeed to her," I said.
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FORE:"I don't believe you! I don't believe you ever had cause for one!" She laid a hand again upon mine.Suddenly it struck this unfortunate clergyman that his words might conceivedly bear a disastrous interpretation to his adorer. Anything was better than to let such an interpretation become coherent: he felt that Alice had been encouraged to be on the point of proposing to him. Without a moments delay (since every moment was precious so long as Alice did not take possession of it) he switched off violently on to religious topics. Just now they had seemed dangerous to him, at this awful moment they presented the appearance of an Ark of Refuge.
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FORE:Mrs Keeling became a shade statelier, without abatement of her extremely proper behavior.
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FORE:I shall not have the catalogue completed. And I shall insist on paying for what you have done. I shall get an estimate of your work made and a price fixed.{190}
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FORE:She threw my hand from her. "I know I do! I'm so unworthy to do it that I wouldn't have believed I could. You thought I was Charlotte Oliver--Heavens! boy, if you should breathe the atmosphere Charlotte Oliver has to live in! But understand again, for your soul's comfort, you haven't tempted me. Go, if you must; go, take your chances; and if you're spared ever to see your dear, dear little mother--""Harry," replied the Major, from his table full of documents, "don't you know that any man who's got a woman wrapped round his finger has also got her wrapped round his throat?"
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FORE:But my unsoldierly motive for going to headquarters kept my misgivings alive. I was hungry for the gentilities of camp; to be where Shakespeare was part of the baggage, where Pope was quoted, where Coleridge and Byron and Poe were recited, Macaulay criticized, and "Les Misrables"--Madame Le Vert's Mobile translation--lent round; and where men, when they did steal, stole portable volumes, not currycombs. Ned Ferry had been Major Harper's clerk, but had managed in several instances to display such fitness to lead that General Austin had lately named him for promotion, and the quartermaster's clerk was now Lieutenant Ferry, raised from the ranks for gallantry, and followed ubiquitously by a chosen sixty or so drawn from the whole brigade. Could the like occur again? And could it occur to a chap who could not comprehend how it had ever occurred at all?
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FORE:A note of distress hung on my hearer's stifled voice; her head went lower and she laid her fingers pensively to her lips. "It would be like him," I heard her murmur, and when I asked if she meant Jewett she shook her head.
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FORE:"And at other times--?"
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