"Captain Geoffrey," she would complain, "it is the Chinese who wear
the pigtail; they are a very savage people."

Then he would call her his little _geisha_, and this she resented;
for she knew from the Muratas that _geisha_ were bad women who took
husbands away from their wives, and that was no joking matter.

"What nonsense!" exclaimed Geoffrey, taken aback by this sudden
reproof: "they are dear little things like you, darling, and they
bring you tea and wave fans behind your head, and I would like to have
twenty of them--to wait upon you!"

He would tease her about a supposed fondness for rice, for
chop-sticks, for paper umbrellas and _jiujitsu._ She liked him to
tease her, just as a child likes to be teased, while all the time
on the verge of tears. With Asako, tears and laughter were never far
apart.

"Why do you tease me because I am Japanese?" she would sob; "besides,
I'm not really. I can't help it. I can't help it!"

"But, sweetheart," her Captain Geoffrey would say, suddenly ashamed
of his elephantine humour, "there's nothing to cry about. I would be
proud to be a Japanese. They are jolly brave people. They gave the
Russians a jolly good hiding."

It made her feel well to hear him praise her people, but she would
say: