From the river they proceeded to Odiwara, where they had a rest of several hours, as the town contained certain things that they wished to see. They found that foreigners were not very numerous at Odiwara, and there was considerable curiosity to see them. Whenever they halted in front of a shop, or to look at anything, of interest, a crowd was speedily collected; and the longer they stood, the greater it became. But there was no impertinence, and not the least insult was offered to them; there was a manifestation of good-natured curiosity, and nothing more. Men, women, and children were equally respectful; and whenever they pressed too closely it was only necessary for the guide to say that the strangers were being inconvenienced, when the crowd immediately fell back. Every day and hour of their stay in Japan confirmed our friends more and more in the belief that there are no more polite people in the world than the Japanese.And now that he had disappeared there was a strong chance that he would never return, and that his personality and all that was connected with him would dissolve from[Pg 193] memory of man or crystallise into a legend. That seemed a legitimate consummation of the affair, and it was the one that Doctor Allingham finally accepted. This visitation, like other alleged miracles in the past, had a meaning; and it was the meaning that mattered more than the actual miracle. To discover the significance of the Clockwork man seemed to Doctor Allingham a task worthy of the highest powers of man.
ONE:She put her hand through the crook of his arm.He smiled at her.
THREE:"The streets are not at all dirty, and in this respect are vastly different from those of any other city we have seen in China. The authorities evidently pay some attention to keeping them clean and preventing the accumulation of dirt. The fronts of many shops are fully open to the street, and the merchants know how to arrange their wares in the most tempting manner. You see lots of pretty things, and are constantly tempted to buy, and it was very well for us that we agreed not to buy anything till the last day, which we were to devote to shopping.Leonardo? asked Keeling.
Unluckily she retorted with some playful parry that just lacked the saving quality of true resentment. How I rejoined would be small profit to tell. I had a fearful sense of falling; first like a wounded squirrel, dropping in fierce amazement, catching, holding on for a panting moment, then dropping, catching and dropping again, down from the top of the great tree where I had so lately sat scolding all the forest; and then, later, with an appalling passivity. And at every fresh exchange of words, while she laughed and fended, and fended and laughed, along with this passivity came a yet more appalling perversity; a passivity and perversity as of delirium, and as horrid to her as to me, though I little thought so then.Einstein could say that we were probably wrong in our basic conceptions. But could he say how we were to get right? The Clockwork man might be the beginning."By all means," replied the Doctor, with a smile; "it is time to begin at once. You are in a foreign country and there are plenty of things to write about. Your information will be to a great extent new and interesting to your friends, and the reasons that I gave you for not writing a long letter from Niagara do not exist here."At the appointed time they were off. They went through the foreign part of Yokohama, and through the native quarter, and then out upon the Tokaido. The boys were curious to see the Tokaido, and when they reached it they asked the Doctor to halt the jin-riki-shas, and let them press their feet upon the famous work of Japanese road-builders. The[Pg 157] halt was made, and gave a few minutes' rest to the men that were drawing them, and from whose faces the perspiration was running profusely.
