nderwent the common enough infliction of smallpox. It showed
itself on the anniversary day of O'Mino's death, and the child's
sickness afforded but mutilated rites for the memorial service of the
mother. Matazaemon would have abandoned all his duties, himself to nurse
the child. O'Naka loved O'Iwa for self and daughter. She had sense
enough to drive the old man into a corner of the room, then out of it;
and further expostulations sent him to his duties. Who, in those iron
days, would accept such excuse for absence? The child worried through,
not unscathed. Her grandmother's qualifications as nurse have been
mentioned. O'Iwa was a plain girl. She had the flat plate-like face of
her mother. The eyes were small, disappearing behind the swollen
eyelids, the hair was scanty, the disease added its black pock marks
which stood thick and conspicuous on a fair skin. Otherwise she was
spared by its ravages, except--

Whatever her looks O'Iwa compensated for all by her disposition. She
had one of those balanced even temperaments, with clear judgment, added
to a rare amiability. Moreover she possessed all the accomplishments and
discipline of a lady. At eleven years Matazaemon unwillingly had sought
and found a place for her in attendance on her ladyship of the great
Hosokawa House. O'Iwa's absence made no difference in his household. The
train of servants was maintained, to be disciplined for her return, to
be ready on this return. Perhaps it was a pleasing fiction to the fond
mind of the aging man that she would return, soon, to-morrow. O'Naka
acquiesced in the useless expense and change in her habits. She always
acquiesced; yet her own idea would have been to make a good housekeeper
of O'Iwa--like herself, to sew, cook, wash, clean--a second O'Mino. She
could not understand the new turn of Matazaemon's mind. As for O'Iwa,
she grew to girlhood in the Hosokawa House, learned all the
accomplishments of her own house and what the larger scale of her new
position could teach her; everything in the way of etiquette and the
polite arts, as well as the plainer tasks of housekeeping, she was
likely ever to be called on to perform. The plain child grew into the
plain woman; perhaps fortunately for her. The _okugata_ (her ladyship)
was a jealous woman. Her spouse was mad on women. Every nubile maid
(_koshimoto_) in the _yashiki_ was a candidate for concubinage. His wife
countered by as hideous a collection of females as her own House and he