THE DRAGON PAINTER
importunities; and the old dame returned to the kitchen, muttering anathemas against the mystic powers she had just attempted to invoke.
On the priest's return, Ando questioned him eagerly. He gained, almost with the first words, certainty of his own freedom. With Tatsu safely arrived, and the betrothal to Kano Umè-ko an outspoken affair, then had the time come for him—Ando Uchida—to reassume the pleasant rôle of friend and benefactor.
He moved into Yeddo before nightfall. His first visit was, of course, to Kano. Elaborately he explained to the sympathetic old man how he had been summoned by telegram into a distant province to attend the supposed death-bed of a relative, how that relative had, by a miracle, recovered. "So now," he remarked in conclusion, "I am again at your service, and shall take the part not only of nakodo in the coming
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