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Show 167 CHAPTER III Harriet When the Lamberts arrived, one afternoon a week later/peered out, suddenly assaulted by something like fear. Japanese towns were all crowded, of course, the streets narrow and the houses unpainted, but she had not been warned that Oji would be so dark. Huddled under its peaks, diminished by a level layer of clouds that chose that very day to make another incursion from Siberia, Oji seemed to brood. In the meantime the Detachments had gathered in the Club for a welcoming party, and they too found the weather, along with the barny, chill room, warring against any sense of gaiety which the festoons of colored paper could present. "Wonder what she's like," said Phyllis. "Anybody met her?" "I have," said Louise. "Once in Kyoto, She's lovely, absolutely lovely- Flawless skin, beautiful hair - " Fortune decreed that her ayes fall on Phyllis's pale-cherry mop at tha moment, and she shifted topics slightly. "And she seems sweet. Smiles a lot. . . ." Something in the phrase sounded weak, and she pulled herself up. "But we barely met. Sid and I were on our way to the station." Was it, someone was to wonder later, fortune or Harriet's own sense of drama that always prepared the way for her? Both perhaps. Since the train had been late, the Detachments had had time for their expectations to rise. They had sat for a long hour, in a half-muted restlessness nobody could explain, |