"What! in a week! You don't know me, Monsieur Kangourou! No, no,
either now, to-morrow, or not at all."

Again a hissing bow, and Kangourou-San, understanding my agitation,
begins to pass in feverish review all the young persons at his disposal
in Nagasaki.

"Let us see--there was Mademoiselle Oeillet. What a pity that you did
not speak a few days sooner! So pretty! So clever at playing the
guitar! It is an irreparable misfortune; she was engaged only yesterday
by a Russian officer.

"Ah! Mademoiselle Abricot!--Would she suit you, Mademoiselle Abricot?
She is the daughter of a wealthy China merchant in the Decima Bazaar, a
person of the highest merit; but she would be very dear: her parents, who
think a great deal of her, will not let her go under a hundred yen--
[A yen is equal to four shillings.]--a month. She is very accomplished,
thoroughly understands commercial writing, and has at her fingers'-ends
more than two thousand characters of learned writing. In a poetical
competition she gained the first prize with a sonnet composed in praise
of 'the blossoms of the blackthorn hedges seen in the dew of early
morning.' Only, she is not very pretty: one of her eyes is smaller than
the other, and she has a hole in her cheek, resulting from an illness of
her childhood."

"Oh, no! on no account that one! Let us seek among a less distinguished
class of young persons, but without scars. And how about those on the
other side of the screen, in those fine gold-embroidered dresses? For
instance, the dancer with the spectre mask, Monsieur Kangourou? or again
she who sings in so dulcet a strain and has such a charming nape to her