Chapter II

Among those astonished at the pure gold pipe carried by Narihiro, those who liked to talk about it most were the shave-pate attendants called _obōzu_. Whenever they met, they put their noses together and chattered away at each other, as they loved to, on the subject of Kaga’s pipe.

“It’s an article fit for a lord.”

“And what’s more, such a thing has intrinsic value.”

“If you pawned it, how much do you suppose it would bring?”

“Who but you would ever pawn it?”

In general, such was the tone of their conversations.

Then one day when five or six of them had their round heads together smoking and talking about the pipe as usual, Kōchiyama Sōshun, attendant of the Osukiya, came by chance where they were. (He was the man who came in later years to play the chief rôle among the “Six Poetical Geniuses of the Tempō Period.”)

“H’m, that pipe again?” he grunted, looking askance at the group.

“It’s a splendid thing both as to carving and the metal of which it’s made. To us who haven’t even silver pipes, it’s an eyesore--”

The attendant Ryōtetsu, who was letting himself go for a little speech, suddenly noticed that Sōshun had drawn over his tobacco pouch and, having filled his own pipe from it, was calmly blowing smoke rings into the air.

“Here, here, that’s not your pouch!”

“That’s all right.”

Without so much as looking at Ryōtetsu, Sōshun filled his pipe again. And when he had smoked it up, he threw back the pouch with a suppressed yawn and said,

“Faw, that’s bad tobacco. A nice pipe-fancier, you!”

Ryōtetsu put away his tobacco pouch hurriedly.

“Nonsense! In a gold pipe, it’d taste pretty good, all right.”

“H’m, that pipe again?” said Sōshun for the second time. “If you think so much of pure gold, why don’t you go and ask him to give you the pipe?”

“Ask him to give me the pipe?”

“Yes.”

Even Ryōtetsu seemed surprised at Sōshun’s audacity.

“However avaricious I may be,--at least, if it were silver, it would be different. But it’s pure gold, that pipe.”

“Of course it is. That’s just why you ought to ask for it. Who’d ever go and get anybody to give him a brass pipe?”

“But I’d be a bit ashamed.”

Ryōtetsu gave his closely shaven pate one tap and struck a posture of reverential awe.

“If you don’t get it, I will. See? Don’t be envious afterwards.”

So saying, Kōchiyama, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, shrugged his shoulders and laughed derisively.