Little Sister Snow | Page 5

before the terror that another woman would be brought into the house that the family name might not die out. Silently she would slip out to the little shrine and pour out passionate words of prayer that just one little soul might be permitted to live.
No matter how long the night, nor how bitter the struggle, morning always found her bright and cheerful, bending every effort to invent new diversions for her husband. She labored to anticipate every wish, and even though she did without, she provided him the best of comfort. Working far into the night, secretly disposing of her small personal treasures, acquiescing in his most trivial statements, she planned that no slightest gap in the domestic arrangement should suggest itself to him.
The woman worked and prayed and waited. Then she triumphed. In the wake of a great snow-storm came the longed-for child, and they called her Yuki, after the snow that had brought them their wish. Hand in hand with Yuki Chan came love, and bound the hearts of the man and woman with ties of a desire fulfilled. From that time to this love had prevailed, and as Yuki Chan climbed on the porch, besmirching its shining surface with her muddy little feet, that had been guiltless of sandals all day, the faces of the two old people lighted up with sudden joy.
Yuki Chan looked ruefully at the muddy prints she had made and realized that she had been a most impolite little girl. Remembering her recent resolve, she sought the eyes in which she had never seen any light for her save that of love. She drew close, and reaching down took her mother's hand, hard and cracked by labor, and laying her cheek against it said, with a voice sure of forgiveness and sweet desire for atonement:
"Go men nasai."
The mother, with a courtly but playful air, granted her pardon with a low salutation. Then with a rush of affection that no convention could stem, she folded the child to her heart and lived another moment of supreme joy.
The father sat by, making no comment, his eyes bright and twinkling. Then he suggested that their Majesties, the dolls, had been waiting long on the shelf. Was it not time they were receiving a visit?
The years of toil were telling on both father and mother, but they daily refreshed themselves at the overbrimming fountain of Yuki Chan's youth, and now, as they each took one of her hands to go in to see the dolls, they were so gay that the child suggested that instead of walking they should do the new one-two-three-hop she had learned at the kindergarten.
It was unheard-of conduct, but it was for Yuki Chan, and father and mother stumped along, cheered on by the small girl who was trying to keep time, but was breathless through sheer excess of happiness.
There was nothing in the room to impede their progress. No chairs with treacherous legs to trip over, no beds, nor tables with sharp corners --nothing whatever but the matting, soft and thick, where Yuki Chan had practised all the gymnastics of childhood unbruised and unharmed.
Half skipping, half hopping, and wholly undone with laughter and exertion, the three at last reached the place where, for six years, offerings had been made for the gift of the child who stood to these two for love.
Arranged in the best room in the house, on five long red-covered shelves, were dolls. Big dolls and little dolls, thin ones and fat ones, each one to represent some royal man or woman of the long ago, and dressed in a fashion of a time almost forgotten. There was Jimmu Tenno, the first real emperor. His hair was done in a curious fashion and his dress was of a wonderful brocade, while his hands clasped two fierce-looking swords. There was Jingo, too, who had won fame and lasting honor by her wonderful fighting, and was so great she had to sit by the emperors and look down on the other empresses. Such a lot of them! Some worthy to be remembered every day in the year, others the more quickly forgotten the better.
Yuki Chan knew them all by heart, and she lingered before those she liked and quickly passed those she did not care for. She could not be rude to an emperor, even though he had been dead hundreds of years. She was really not very afraid of the greatness of the old doll men and women who sat on the shelf, still it was well to be careful about handling them. She might be turned into a lizard or a snake, just as the old lodge-keeper had said.
But her delight was in the miniature toilet articles of solid silver, costly gold lacquer, and porcelain, so tiny, so