Part 44

“But half a year,” said the servant. “You were to have stayed one year, but your affianced, having acquired such great fame at court, your father wished to hasten on your honorable marriage.”

“Oh,” said the girl, and then repeated in a low, happy voice, “hasten on my marriage.”

She turned suddenly toward the maid.

“Do you find me changed?” she asked.

The woman regarded her dubiously.

“Ye-es—no. Last night I thought you more than usually impatient, Masago.”

“Ah—was I so? I did not mean it.”

“But to-day you seem more kind than even as a child, though you were the most gentle, passive, and best of little ones.”

“And so I am just now,” said Sado-ko, merrily. “I am not changed one little bit. Think of me, if you please, as a child.”

“Perhaps the fault was mine last night,” pursued the woman, glad to prolong the conversation with Masago.

“Look!” exclaimed the girl, pointing to the garden. “See, some little children!”

“Your brothers, Masago. Can you not see?”

“Brothers—mine! Oh-h!”

Dropping her flowers on the veranda, she ran lightly down the path, as though to meet the little boys. Halfway down the path a sense of panic seized upon the princess. She paused in painful hesitancy, scarce knowing which way to turn.

Would not these little brothers of Masago recognize the deception? Could the likeness be so strong as to deceive Masago’s own family? A maid’s judgment was but a poor criterion.

She stood quite still, waiting, yet dreading their approach. Her first impulse had been to run in loving fashion to meet the little boys. Her sudden fear of these individuals saved her from doing that which Masago never had done, caress or fondle her small brothers.

While Sado-ko possessed an innate love of nature and of children, these things but irritated poor Masago, who called the country dull, the town enchanting, children wearisome, and fashion fascinating. Though each feature of the faces of these two sisters was identically alike, their natures vastly differed. Sado-ko was all her mother in nature, and even the cold harshness of her life had frozen but her exterior self. Masago was the complement of Prince Nijo. Her previous environment, association with Ohano, and possibly a little portion of the latter’s nature made her what she was,—a girl of weak and vain ambitions.

Now the princess stood hesitating, fearfully, before the little army of Masago’s brothers, five in all. The older ones spoke her name respectfully, as they had been taught to do. The smaller ones pulled her sleeves and obi mischievously, as though they sought to tease her; but when she laughed, they seemed abashed, and ran to hide behind a tree from whence they peered at her.

The maid who brought them from the neighbor’s bade the girl an apathetic good morning, and seemed surprised at the cordiality of the other’s greeting.

Sado-ko breathed with some relief as the children disappeared within the house. Then for the first time she sighed wistfully.

“If they had loved Masago,” she said, “surely they would miss her. But no, a stranger steps into her clothes, takes her place within the house, and fickle childhood cannot see.”

In gentle depression she moved toward the house, then slowly up the steps to Masago’s balcony, from which she watched the children take their morning bath in the family pond. It was a pretty sight, she thought, to see their little bare, brown bodies shining in the sun. A little later the elder children went whistling down the path to school while the nurse disappeared with the younger ones.

“Strange,” said Princess Sado-ko, “that none of them seemed glad to see their sister. Was not Masago loved, then?”

She pushed the doors open and thoughtfully entered the chamber.

“Perhaps,” she said, “the foreigners speak truth. What is that pretty proverb of their honorable religion? Is it not, ‘The love begets the love’? Masago plainly did not love her little brothers. Hence they have but indifference for her.”

Again she sighed.

“Ah,” she said, “what kind of maiden, then, is this I have exchanged for me?”

She saw the tumbled couch upon which she had slept. She recalled the fact that Masago had told her she would be required to make her own bed and attend her own chamber, for Kwacho deemed such household tasks desirable and admirable in a woman.