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The next mornin', after tiffen, which wuz what they call breakfast, bein' just so ignorant of good Jonesville language, Josiah and I and Tommy sallied out to see what we could see, the rest of our party havin' gone out before.
They had a faded, washed-out look; and I do not wonder at it, considering the life they lead. They get up about nine, breakfast and pay or receive visits, then tiffen, siesta, a drive to the Apollo Bunder, to hear the band, or to meet their husbands at the Fort, dine and bed that is the programme of the day. The men are better because they have cricket and polo.
The palace is one of the oldest in Tokio. It wuz only one story high, but the rooms wuz beautiful. The fan chamber wuz fifty feet square, the walls covered with fans of every size and shape and color. The only furniture in this room wuz two magnificent cabinets of lacquer work and four great, gorgeous bronze vases. The tiffen wuz gin by a high official; there wuz fifty guests.
And after they went out I sez: "I'd hold myself a little back, Josiah. To say that you'd never had means to take breakfast in Jonesville shows ignorance and casts a slur on me." "Oh, I meant I never had any tiffen with it, Samantha; you'll see it don't mean plain breakfast; you'll see that they'll pass some tiffen, and we shall have to eat it no matter what it's made on, rats or mice or anything.
Drawings. I have just returned from visiting a collection of drawings by the old masters, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Rembrandt, Titian, &c., &c. Wonderful, to be sure! There is a pen-and-ink drawing by Munro, of uncommon merit; another from a capital old engraving by Tiffen, hardly to be distinguished from an elaborate line engraving, full of good faces and straight lines, with nothing picturesque.
But Josiah spoke right up and sez he had rather see tiffen than anybody else in China, and mistrustin' from Robert's looks that he had made a mistake, he hastened to add that tiffenin' wuz sunthin' he had always hankered after; he had always wanted to tiffen, but hadn't the means in Jonesville. Sez Robert, "Then I shall accept this invitation for breakfast for all our party."
Josiah wuz on the lookout, I could see, for tiffen to be passed, but it wuzn't, so he ort to give up, but wouldn't; but argyed with me out to one side that "they wuz out of tiffen, and hadn't time to buy any and couldn't borry." Well, the Governor-General seemed to be greatly taken with Dorothy.
After the first heavy shock there wuz two lighter ones, and that ended it for that time. But though we all went back to the table, I can't say that I took any great comfort in the tiffen after that. A blow has fell onto me I wuzn't prepared for. We found a number of letters waitin' for us here at the tarven that Robert Strong had ordered to be forwarded there.
Dorothy and Miss Meechim and Robert Strong come back pretty soon from a tower of sight-seein', and they said we'd all been invited to tiffen with the Governor-General the next day. Well, I didn't have the least idee what it wuz, but I made up my mind to once that if tiffenin' wuz anything relatin' to gamblin' or the opium trade, I shouldn't have a thing to do with it.
He is generally responsible, and is in fact what we should call at home housekeeper he and the cook between them arrange everything. I say to him, 'Three gentlemen are coming to tiffen. He nods and says 'Atcha, sahib, which means 'All right, sir, and then I know it will be all right. If I have a fancy for any special thing, of course I say so.
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