I believe that this remark was almost understood in the circle around me.
Consternation was depicted on every face, jaws dropped, and pipes went
out. And now I address my reproaches to Kangourou: "Why have you brought
her to me in such pomp, before friends and neighbors of both sexes,
instead of showing her to me discreetly, as if by chance, as I had
wished? What an affront you will compel me now to put upon all these
polite persons!"

The old ladies (the mamma, no doubt, and aunts), prick up their ears, and
M. Kangourou translates to them, softening as much as possible, my
heartrending decision. I feel really almost sorry for them; the fact is,
that for women who, not to put too fine a point upon it, have come to
sell a child, they have an air I was not prepared for: I can hardly say
an air of respectability (a word in use with us which is absolutely
without meaning in Japan), but an air of unconscious and good-natured
simplicity. They are only doing a thing that is perfectly admissible in
their world, and really it all resembles, more than I could have thought
possible, a bona fide marriage.

"But what fault do you find with the little girl?" asks M. Kangourou, in
consternation.

I endeavor to present the matter in the most flattering light:

"She is very young," I say; "and then she is too white, too much like our
own women. I wished for one with an ivory skin, just as a change."

"But that is only the paint they have put on her, Monsieur! Beneath it,
I assure you, she is of an ivory hue."