=February 22.=--I had been really bullied into playing Hockey to represent the world against Japanese-born British. They were, of course, far stronger than we, as nearly all live together in Yokohama and practice twice a week, while none of us had played together before. We got 2 goals to their 4, however, and patted ourselves on the back.
Returning by train (Yokohama to Tokio, of course, is _the_ chief line of rail in the country, so that the incident should not be compared with doings in some far-off highland place in Scotland), the train suddenly drew up with a jerk, far from one station and about the same distance from the next. The passengers were surprised, some slightly alarmed, and the train calmly waited for some time and then started racing back to the station from which we had come. We all resigned ourselves to a broken bridge, overturned carriages on the track, or something of the sort, and finally drew up at the station we had just left--much commotion on the platform, and we learned that from the luggage van some parcels had not been delivered! They were delivered over to the proper person and the train started off once more, to reach Tokio not a little late.
=February 24.=--There have been signs of the coming Dolls’ Festival, to take place on the 3rd day of the 3rd month. I have mentioned them already (see p. 74). The shops are now full of them, and most fascinating they are, but too expensive to indulge in as I should like. The figures are all in little boxes, and sit solemnly, with their stiff robes spread out, as though they were really the nobles that they represent, and every one is interested in buying them, or at least gazing at them in their temporary homes. Several shops have sprung up this week filled with these boxes of dolls, and selling nothing else.
=February 25.=--At work all day at fossils, the record so far, for with the boy I cut and finished eleven sections in one day, some very nice. A ball at the British Embassy in the evening, very pleasant. Many interesting and amusing things happened, but unless given in great detail would not appeal to any one outside local gossip. Captain von L---- introduced me to the loveliest woman there--an American (sad to hear their awful accent coming out of such patrician lips!), the one who at a previous dance had so entranced me and my young partner that we spent our sitting-out time following her around to see her eat ices and laugh; her manner was perfection--calm, still, and gracious, honey-sweet looks in eyes that never smiled while one was speaking to her, and that just broke into little curls of smiles as she answered--a suggestion of humility while waiting to hear another’s banalities, yet with it a commanding dignity that forbade any one else to interrupt the person who was speaking to her. Her name is Mrs. D----, and I am going to see her, as she very graciously invited me to do. I wonder if she includes thought-reading among her other charms and read my admiration? Her high-heeled pink satin slippers twinkled gaily in the dance; she did not hesitate to lift the Worth frock very high--with such ankles I wouldn’t! On her white soft neck were the loveliest little blue veins, I never saw anything so suggestive of living marble. She was like white marble, with an underflush of rose and violet. The little wrinkles at the corners of her eyes added to her charm rather than detracted from it. She is the only woman in Tokio who has bewitched me.