The girls motored into town and spent the morning shopping.  From one curio shop to another they wandered in the quest of nothing except diversion.

“There is no end to the beautiful things here,” sighed Mary, wishing in her heart that she could carry the most beautiful and priceless thing in Tokyo home to her mother.

“Yes, everything is beautiful except the weather,” remarked Billie, pointing to the black clouds which had gathered while they were in a shop.  “We are going to have one of those red-letter storms, Mary.  I think we’d better hurry home as fast as we can.”

But the “Comet,” who never had any luck all the time he was in Japan, proceeded to burst one of his tires and the explosion mingled threateningly with a low roll of thunder in the distance.

“We’d better take him to a garage and go back in a ’riksha,” announced Billie, much annoyed.  “Poor old ‘Comet,’ it wasn’t his fault, but the prologues of these storms do put one in a bad temper.”

“They frighten me,” said Mary.  “They give me evil forebodings.”

The “Comet” was accordingly left at the garage to be repaired, and the girls were well on their way home in a jinriksha before anything worse had happened than rumblings and strange mutterings at what seemed a great distance away.  It sometimes takes hours for a great storm in Japan to reach a head; which, in a way, is rather fortunate, because it gives people a chance to prepare for the struggle.  A house is usually completely closed with storm shutters.  Not even the smallest opening is left, through which the demon wind can find its way and so carry off the roof, or even the house itself.  Every detachable object out of doors is taken inside.  The gardener is seen hurrying about protecting his most valuable plants, and by the time the storm bursts upon the scene, filled with demoniacal shrieks and howls like an army of barbarians pursuing the enemy, it finds its victims prepared for the attack.

When the ’riksha turned in at the Campbell gate, it had grown so dark that only the dim outlines of the house were visible at the end of the driveway.  No one saw them arrive.  The servants were probably at the back putting on the storm shutters, which were all in place at the front.

Billie invited the ‘riksha man to go around to the servants’ quarters and wait until the storm had passed, but he nodded cheerfully and took his way down the road.

“Let’s go in by the passage door,” suggested Mary.  “Everything is closed up here.”

Billie followed her wearily.  The heat and oppression were almost beyond endurance.  She felt she might be suffocated at any moment.  It was like trying to breathe under a feather mattress or in a total vacuum, for that matter.

“Shall we put on our kimonos and lie on the floor in the library?” she suggested as they slipped into the passage.  And this they accordingly did without another word or a moment’s delay.  It was too hot to think or sleep or eat or speak.  All they desired was to stretch out on the rug in a cool dark room and keep perfectly still.