While they drank sugar-water and munched candy, they wandered along looking
at the booths, where all sorts of wonders were to be seen--booths full of
conjurers, acrobats, dancers, of women who could stretch their necks to
the length of their arms, or thrust their lips up to cover their eyebrows,
and a hundred other curious tricks. The price of admission was one rin
each to children, and finally they chose the conjurer's booth, and saw him
spout fire from his mouth, swallow a long sword, and finally exhibit a
sea-serpent, which appeared to be made of seal-skins tacked together.
When they left the show they came all at once on one of the great delights
of a Japanese fair. It was the man with the cooking-stove, round whom
children always throng as flies gather about honey. For the fifth part of
a farthing you may have the use of his cooking-stove, you may have a piece
of dough, or you may have batter with a cup, a spoon, and a dash of soy
sauce. You may then abandon yourself to the delights of making a cake for
yourself, baking it for yourself, and then eating it yourself, and if you
spend a couple of hours over the operation the man will not grumble. As
this arrangement combines both the pleasure of making a cake and playing
with fire, it is very popular, and we cannot wonder that Taro took a turn,
though Miss Blossom did not. She felt herself rather too big to join the
swarm of happy urchins round the stove.
While Taro was baking his cake she spent her third rin on a peep-show,
where a juggler made little figures of paper and pasteboard dance and
perform all kinds of antics.
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