size and shape of purple eggplant and long, sprawling, delicious lotus roots.
Brother looked back and laughed.
“Who is he? What were all the people doing?” I asked, as soon as we reached the end of the long street and rolled out on to the public road.
“It is a vegetable auction,” Brother explained. “Merchants buy in quantities, and every morning the things are auctioned off by the basketful. Weren’t those fine lotus roots? If we hadn’t had breakfast only a couple of hours ago I’d believe I was hungry.”
At another place we went by a house where death had entered. Before the door stood a funeral palanquin into which coolies with big hats and crest-coats were just lifting the heavy wooden bucket containing the body. Over it was thrown a small kimono of scarlet and gold, showing that the dead child must have been a little daughter. The dress would have been white for a son. Around stood a number of white-robed mourners with white towels folded over their hair. As we passed, I caught a glimpse of a screen placed upside down and the lighted candles of a tiny shrine.
At one place, where the road ran close to a broad river with bold bluffs coming down, in some places, almost to the water, we saw a number of odd floating rice-mills with turning paddle-wheels that looked like a fleet of boats standing motionless in a hopeless struggle against a strong tide. I wondered where, in that rocky country, were enough people to eat all the rice that was being ground; but when we turned away from the river we suddenly found ourselves in a silk-culture district, where our road ran through village after village, each having its own mulberry plantation.
The town where we expected to spend the night was only a few hours ahead when the sky began to darken with a
