Chapter 1

June had never sat still so long during the whole six years of his existence. His slender body usually so restless and noisy was motionless; his hands too fond of teasing and mischief lay limp in his lap, even his tongue was still and that was the most wonderful of all. The only part of him that stirred was a sparkling pair of gray eyes that were looking out upon the strangest world they had ever seen.

The entire day had been one of enchantment, from the first waking hour when he discovered that the engines on the big steamer where he had lived for seventeen days had stopped, and that the boat was actually lying at anchor just off the coast of Japan. Seki San, his Japanese nurse who had cared for him ever since he was a baby, had been so eager to look out of the port-hole that she could scarcely attend to her duties, and the consequence was that he had to stand on the sofa and hook his mother’s dress and help her with the little pins at the back of the neck while Seki San finished the packing. June could not dress himself but he knew a great deal about hooks and eyes and belt pins. When mother got in a hurry she lost things, and experience had taught him that it was much easier to fasten the pin where it belonged than to spend fifteen minutes on the floor looking for it.

At last when all the bags and trunks were ready, and the pilot and the health officer had come aboard, and everybody had waited until they could not wait another moment, the passengers were brought ashore in a wheezy, puffy launch, and were whirled up to the hotel in queer little buggies drawn by small brown men with bare legs and mushroom hats, and great sprawling signs on their backs.

Since then June had sat at a front window too engrossed to speak. Just below him lay the Bund or sea-road, with the wall beyond where the white waves broke in a merry splash and then fell back to the blue water below. Out in the harbor there were big black merchant steamers, and white men-of-war, there were fishing schooners, and sampans with wobbly, crooked oars. But the street below was too fascinating to see much beyond it. Jinrikishas were coming and going with passengers from the steamers and the coolies laughed and shouted to each other in passing. Women and girls clattered by on wooden shoes with funny bald-headed, slant-eyed babies strapped on their backs. On the hotel steps, a little girl in a huge red turban and a gorgeous dress of purple and gold was doing handsprings, while two boys in fancy dress sang through their noses and held out fans to catch the pennies that were tossed from the piazza above.