Part 7

The latter, in her perfect neatness, made a contrast to the mother, who surveyed her with fond approval.

“Well, Masago, have you finished your embroidery?” she asked pleasantly.

The girl shook her head silently.

“Go, then; get your frame now,” said Ohano, “and we will work together.”

“No,” said Masago, seating herself on a veranda mat, and leaning back against the railing, “I don’t want to work. I want to talk to you.”

Ohano’s plump body quickly seated itself opposite Masago. The opportunity for a morning gossip with Masago was something she never denied herself.

She had just opened her mouth to begin, When Masago quietly put her hand over the red orifice.

“No; do not speak for a moment, mother, but listen to me.”

Masago smiled faintly at the expression in her mother’s eyes and continued rapidly:—

“Listen. I am seventeen years now,—old enough, almost, my father says, to be married. But I do not wish to marry.”

“But—” began Ohano.

“No; do not interrupt me. I want to go away to school,—a private school in Kyoto, where other rich men send their daughters, and where I, too, can sometimes see those palaces and maybe the noble ladies and gentlemen you have told me so much about.”

“But, Masago, every maiden of your age wishes to marry; and your father has chosen—”

“Let me finish, if you please, or I will not talk to you at all. I do not know why it is, but I have no desire to marry; and sometimes I feel like one who is stifling in this miserable little town. Why should we, who have more wealth than many of those in Tokyo who live in palaces, be caged up here, like birds with clipped wings? What is the use of having that wealth if we may not use it? Oh, there are so many joyful happenings in the capital every day and every night. I read about it in those papers which father brings home sometimes from Tokyo. The city is so gay and brilliant, mother, and there are so many peculiar foreigners to see. I was made for such a place—not for this dull, quiet town. Why, I would even be content to see all this as an outsider, but to have to remain here when—Oh!”

She struck her hands together with an eloquent motion. Ohano stared at her aghast, regarding her flushing face and snapping eyes.

“Oh, mother,” she continued, “many people say I do not belong here. They recognize my difference from themselves,—everybody here. You know it is so. Ever since I was a little girl when you would tell me the fairy tales of those palaces in Kyoto—”

“They were not fairy tales,” said Ohano, gently.

“No, but I thought them so—then. And I imagined that some day the gods would befriend me, and that I would belong to that joyful world of which you spoke. And now to come to seventeen years and to be given right away in marriage to some foolish youth before I have had any chance to see—”

Her voice broke, and her emotion was so unusual a thing that Ohano could not bear to see it. Both her heart and tongue were stirred.

“You have a right to see it,” she said. “You belong to it—are a part of it, Masago. Your own father is—”

She clapped her hands over her mouth in consternation and sudden fright at what she was about to divulge.

Masago became very white, her eyes dilated, her thin nostrils quivered. She fixed her strange, long eyes full on those of her mother. Then she seized her by the shoulders. She spoke in a whisper:—

“You have something to tell me. Now—speak at once.”

Half an hour later Masago was alone on the veranda of her home. She sat in an attitude of intense absorption. Her downcast eyes were looking at the slender fingers of her hands, spread out in her lap. They were thin, shapely little fingers, the nails rosy and perfect in shape. Masago had been studying them absently for some time. Suddenly she held up one little hand, then slowly brought it to her face.

“That was the reason they were so beautiful—my hands!” she said softly.

That night Ohano would not let her husband sleep until he had made her a promise. They lay on their respective mattresses under the same mosquito netting. It was quite in vain for Kwacho to sleep while the voice of Ohano droned on. After listening for fully two hours to a steady stream of childish eloquence and reproach, and answering only in gruff monosyllables, he sprang up in bed and demanded of his better half whether she intended to remain awake all night. Whereat that small but stubborn individual raised herself also, and, propping her elbows on her knees, informed the irate Kwacho that such was her intention, and that, in fact, she did not expect to sleep any night again until he had made some concession to the ambition of their only daughter, which, after all, was a most praiseworthy one,—a desire for more learning.

Kwacho’s answer was not the result of a sudden appreciation of Masago’s virtues, but he was sleepy and tired, too. There was much to be done at the store on the morrow, and Ohano’s suggestion that she intended to keep awake for other nights was not a relishing prospect.

“She shall go on one condition,” he said.