eemed to stir
and wave green leaves toward her. With head down-bent, the girl
followed her father through the house.

Mata helped them into the two new, shining jinrikishas, a dragon-crest
blazoned on the one for Ume's use. She scolded the kuruma men in her
shrill voice, giving a dozen instructions in one sentence, and
pretending anger at their answering jests. On the doorstep stood the
little seamstress ready to cast a handful of dried peas. When Kano and
Ume-ko were off, Mata scrambled excitedly into her own vehicle. Her
human steed, turning round for an impudent and good-natured stare,
drawled out an unprintable remark. The seamstress shrieked "sayonara"
and pelted space with the peas. Afterward she ran on foot down the
slope of the hill and joined the smiling crowd of lookers-on. Soon it
was over. The peddler picked up his pack, and the children their toys.
Gates opened or slid aside in panels to receive their owners. The
jangling of small gate-bells made the hillside merry for an instant,
then busy silence again took possession.

No one at all was left in the Kano home. The little cottage of Ume's
birth, of her short, happy life and dawning fame, drew itself together
in the unusual silence. Sunshine fell thick upon the garden, and
warmed even the lazy gold-fish in their pigmy lake. In the plum-tree
branch that touched Ume-ko's abandoned chamber, the cricket chirped
softly to himself. He knew the Secret!

VII

Six days were gone. The marriage was a thing accomplished, yet old
Kano sat, lean, dispirited, drowned apparently in depths of fathomless
despair, in the centre of his corner room. Mata, busy about her
household tasks, sometimes passed across the matting, or flaunted a
dusting-cloth within a partly opened shoji. At such moments her look
and gesture were eloquent of disdain. Her patience, long tried by the
kindly irritable master, was about at an end. Surely a spoiled old
man-child like the crouching figure yonder would exhaust the
forbearance of Jizo Sama himself!

Six days ago he had been happy,--indeed, too happy! for he and Uchida
had drunk themselves into a condition of giggling bliss, and had needed
to be taken away bodily from the bridal bower, hoisted into a double
jinrikisha, and driven off ignominiously, still embracing, still
pledging with tears an eternity of brotherhood. Yes, on that day Kano
had hailed the earth as one broad, enamelled sake-cup, the air, a new
infu