was
followed. "The men of the house cannot be tempted to approach such an
apparition. The other girls have not time to devote to making up O'Iwa
as for the stage. They have not twenty _ryo[u]_ at stake, as had
Cho[u]bei. Let her wash the dishes." Thus was O'Iwa "degraded" from her
high estate as street-walker. Turned into a kitchen drudge she shed
tears of joy. She almost forgot the matter of the pledge in this new and
pleasant life. The time and the place, perhaps the drug she took, had
done their work on the mind of O'Iwa. Iemon, the house of Samoncho[u],
the _ihai_ in the Butsudan, the pleasant garden--all were of the tissue
of a dream amid a toil which deposited her on the straw wrappings of the
charcoal and in a shed, thoroughly worn out at the end of her long day.
The O'Iwa of Samoncho[u] at this end of the lapsing year of service was
dormant. But accidents will happen.

There was excitement in the house. Mobei, the dealer in toilet
articles--combs, brushes, jewel strings--was at the grating. The women
were clustered before the wares he exposed in his trays. This Mobei, as
dealer in toilet articles (_koma-mono_) wandered all the wards of Edo,
his little trays fitting neatly into each other, and wrapped in a
_furoshiki_ or bundle-handkerchief. His wares formed a marvellous
collection of the precious and common place, ranging from true coral and
tortoise shell, antique jewelry and curious _netsuke_ of great value, to
their counterfeits in painted wood, horn, and coloured glass. "Mobei
San, long has been the wait for you. Is there a bent comb in
stock?"--"Truly this Mobei is vexing. He humbly makes apology, lady.
Here is just the thing.... How much? Only a _bu_.... Too high? Nay! With
women in the ordinary walks of life it is the wage of a month. To the
honoured Oiran it is but a night's trifling." The other women tittered.
O'Haru was a little nettled at the high sounding title of Oiran. She
would not show her irritation. Mobei continued his attentions. He laid
before her and the others several strings of jewels, their "coral" made
of cleverly tinted paste. "Deign to look; at but one _bu_ two _shu[u]_.
If real they would cost twenty _ryo[u]_."--"And Mobei has the real?" The
dealer laughed. As in pity, and to give them a glimpse of the far off
upper world, he raised the cover of a box in the lower tier. They gasped
in admiration before the pink of the true coral. Hands were stretched
through the grating to touch it.