ust the place on this bare wall space!" continued Molly. "It's
really a heaven-sent gift, Miss Sen, because we were wishing for
something really beautiful to hang over that divan. But aren't you
robbing yourself?"

"No, no. I beg you assurance. Otoyo have many suchly. It is nothing.
Beautiful young ladies do honor by accepting humbly gift."

"Let's hang it at once," suggested Molly, "while the step ladder is yet
with us. Queen's step ladder is so much in demand that it's very much
like the snowfall in the river, 'a moment there, then gone forever.'"

The two girls moved the homely but coveted ladder across the room, and,
with much careful shifting and after several suggestions timidly made
by Otoyo, finally hung up the scroll. It really glorified the whole room
and made a framed lithograph of a tea-drinking lady in a boudoir costume
and a kitten that trifled with a ball of yarn on the floor, Nance's
possession, appear so commonplace that she shamefacedly removed it from
its tack and put it back in her trunk, to Molly's secret relief.

"Won't you sit down and talk to us a few minutes?" asked Nance. "We
still have a quarter of an hour before bed time."

Otoyo timidly took a seat on a corner of one of the divans. The girls
could not help noticing another small package which she had not yet
proffered for their acceptance. But she now placed it in Nance's hand.

"A little of what American lady call 'meat-sweet,'" she said
apologetically. "It all way from Japan have coming. Will beautiful
ladies accept so humbly gift?"

The box contained candied ginger and was much appreciated by young
American ladies, the humble giver of this delightful confection being
far too shy to eat any of it herself.

By dint of some questioning, it came out that Otoyo's father was a
merchant of Tokio. She had been sent to an American school in Japan for
two years and had also studied under an English governess. She could
read English perfectly and, strange to say, could write it fairly
accurately, but, when it came to speaking it, she clung to her early
participial-adverbial faults, although she trusted to overcome them in a
very little while. She had several conditions to work off before
Thanksgiving, but she was cheerful and her ambition was to be "beautiful
American young lady."

She was, indeed, the most charming little doll-like creature the girls
had ever seen, so unreal and different from themselves, that they could
hardly credit her