sion of heavenly brew. But now----

"Mata!" the thin voice came, "are you certain that this is but the
sixth day of my son's wedding?"

"It is but the sixth day, indeed, since your daughter's sacrifice to a
barbarian, if that is what you mean," returned Mata, with a belligerent
flourish of her paper duster.

"That is what I meant," said the other, passively. "Then the week is
not to be finished until to-morrow at noon. Twenty-four hours of
torture to me! I suppose that the ingrates will count time to the last
shadow! Oh, Mata, Mata, you once were a faithful servant! Why did you
let me make that foolish promise of giving them an entire week? A day
would have been ample, then Tatsu and I could have begun to paint."

"Ara!" said Mata, uttering a sound more forcible than respectful. "Had
it been a decent person thus married to my young mistress, instead of a
mountain sprite, they should have had a month together!"

Kano groaned under the suggestion. "Then, heartless woman, at the end
of the month you would have been without a master; for surely my
sufferings would, in a month, have shrunk me to an insect gaki chirping
from a tree."

"It is to me a matter of honorable amazement that in one week you are
not already a gaki, with your incessant complaints," retorted the old
dame, still unrelenting.

"If I could be sure he is painting all this interminable time," said
Kano to himself, wringing the nervous hands together.

"You may be augustly sure he is not," chuckled the cruel Mata.

The old man got hastily to his feet. "Mata, Mata, your tongue is that
of a viper,--a green viper, with stripes. I will go from its reach
into the highway. Of course my son is painting. What else could he be
doing?"

The old dame's laugh fell like salt upon a wound. Kano caught up a
bamboo cane and, hatless, went into the street. It was odd, how often
during this week he found need of walking; still stranger, how often
his wanderings led him to the dodan hedge enclosing Tatsu's cottage.
He paused at the gate now, tormented by the reflection that he himself
had drawn the bolt. How still it was in there! Not even a sparrow
chirped. Could something be wrong? Suddenly a laugh rang out,--the
low spontaneous laugh of a happy girl. Kano clutched the gate-post.
It was not the sort of laugh that one gives at sight of a splendid
painting. It had too intimate, too personal, a ring. But surely Tatsu
was painting! What else did