d coaxed to drink milk while she, with skilful fingers and a
pair of scissors, transformed her smooth fur into a wonderful landscape
garden. Short work had made kitty's head slick and shiny, like a lake,
with a stray bristle or two, which stood for trees. In the middle of her
back stood Fuji, the great mountain, with numberless little Fujis to
keep company. Many winding paths ran down kitty's legs to queer,
shapeless shrines, and it was only when Yuki Chan had insisted on making
a curious old pine-tree with twisted limbs of kitty's short and stubby
tail that trouble ensued, and she had been requested by her mother to
take her honorable little body to the garden.

Yuki Chan remembered her mother's beautiful smile of love as she
gently chided her, and recalled the note of trouble in the kind voice.
Was the mother sorry because she had stuck out a very pink tongue at a
cross-eyed old image that sat on the floor on the very spot that she
wanted to step upon? Or was it--and Yuki Chan grew grave--that the
last _go rin_ had been spent for the new dress she was to wear that
day?

All her short life Yuki Chan had lived in a house of love, but no veil
of affection, no sacrifice, could shield her from the knowledge of
poverty. She had never seen her mother wear but one festival dress,
yet her own little kimono was ever bright and dainty, and even the new
brocade of the dolls' dresses stood alone with the weave of gold and
tinsel.

A solemn thought, like a pebble dropped into water, caused circle
after circle to trouble her childish mind. She did not quite
understand, but she knew there was something she must learn. She had
been naughty and weighed her mother's spirits. She had caused a grave
look in her father's kind eyes, and had sent the household pets
scattering with her mischief. Now she must be good--very good--else
the fox spirit would come upon her, and she would go through life an
unhappy soul. She would give more obedience to the honorable mother,
whose every word had been a caress. It was as if for the first time
the great book of life opened before her and, though unconscious of
its meaning, the first word she saw spelled Duty.

The noises from the house grew fainter. The child, with blinking eyes,
lay gazing straight above her. Overhead the branches overflowed into a
canopy of crimson, which shut out the great real world and opened into
a fairy world wherein only the untried feet of youth may tread and the
fragile