Little Sister Snow | Page 6

beautifully carved they must have meant the eyesight of some workman, only too glad to shut out the sunlight forever if he might produce just one perfect thing.
The things, however, that made Yuki Chan clap her hands and the nesting birds perk up their heads at the sound of her clear, sweet laugh were the funny little lacquer carts in which the royalty was supposed to ride, drawn by impossible fat bullocks, so bow-legged that their curves formed a big round O. Yuki Chan made her red lips into the same shape, and called her mother to look.
She pretended to feed the dolls with real food and wine, and actually played with the five court musicians, because they were partly servants and it did not matter.
Her tongue ran in ceaseless chatter. Her father and mother hovered around her, repeating the history of all those wonderful people. Yuki Chan listened very little, so concerned was she with her own comments, until she happened to see an anxious look creep into her mother's eyes. It was something every little girl must know, and if Yuki Chan's honorable ears refused to open, how would she learn? Then Yuki Chan nestled close, and gave little pats of love and tried to listen. THE shadows of the bamboo grew long and slim as the sun kissed them good night. The sails skimmed homeward on a silver sea as the west covered its rosy pink in a veil of deepest blue. The young birds in the old plum-tree did not stir at the loving touch of the mother who, with a soft bill, searched and sought for the lost one. The plum-blossoms lingered yet for a night as the air had grown chill.
Within the house Yuki Chan, still dressed, lay on the floor, weary with the wonders of the day. Her mother took from a small inclosure beneath a shelf many soft comforts with which she arranged the child's bed. Yuki Chan, talking all the time in a low monotone, tried to unravel a tangle in her mind of birds and cats and dolls. It was all getting unmanageable and very hazy, when her mother gathered her into her arms, and quickly casting aside her two garments laid her gently in a bath of caressing warmth. A moment more and the little maiden lay like a rose-leaf in her bed.
The night-lamp made shadowy ghosts of all it touched, and one gleam of light, escaping the paper shade, hung like an aureole above the head of Yuki Chan's mother as she knelt with clasped hands before the Buddha on the shelf.
Her moving lips had only one refrain: "The child, the child, the child."
Yuki Chan watched the play of the light in the half-dark room. What funny things those shadows made, and, strangely enough, one more wonderful than all the rest grew into the shape of the boy, and his lips were saying, "Be good."
Then Yuki Chan lost herself in a mist of drowsiness, and her mother sat by, and kept time with her hand as she chanted rather than sang:
"Sleep, little one, sleep. The sparrows are nodding. Beneath the deep willow-trees The night-lamp is burning. Thy mother is watching, Sleep, little one, sleep."
CHAPTER III
Twelve times had the plum-tree scattered its petals to the wind, and Yuki San [Footnote: The honorific Chan, used only in childhood, is changed to San in later years.] had passed from childhood into girlhood, and had already touched the border of that grave land of grown-up, where all the worries lie. For though she was apparently only a larger edition of the spoiled, impulsive happy child of old, yet often her eyes were shadowed with the struggle of shielding her aging father and mother from the poverty that was coming closer day by day.
During the three years she had been gaining her education at the English mission-school, they had toiled unceasingly that she might have the best the country could afford, but now that she had returned after her long struggle with a strange language and a strange people, it was but fitting that she should take up her duties as the daughter of an impoverished family of high rank. The father, grown old and feeble, gave up the battle for existence, and being a devout Buddhist, turned his thoughts upon Nirvana, which he strove diligently to enter by perpetual meditation and prayer. The mother, used to guidance and unable to think or plan for herself, turned helplessly to Yuki San.
The duties were heavy for girlish shoulders, and often as the dawn crept over the mountains it found the girl wide-eyed and still, trying to solve the problem of modest demand and meager supply.
She had learned many things at the mission-school. She could read and write English imperfectly, she could recite the multiplication