Little Sister Snow | Page 8

you had an encounter in your very early days, because he dared to thwart your plans concerning a cat? I remember it very well, and the jolly picnics and excursions that you and my mother and I took together afterward.
I hope you have not forgotten me, for I am going to claim the privilege of the conqueror in that old battle and ask a favor of you. My Government has sent me out to your country on some important business, and finding there was no hotel close to my work, I wrote to the school where my mother and I visited twelve years ago, and asked them to recommend a family that would be good enough to take me in for two months. Strangely enough your father's name was suggested, and when I read that the only daughter both spoke and wrote English, and that her name was Yuki San, my mind flew back to my "Little Sister Snow" of the days gone by.
Could your father manage to accommodate me for a couple of months, if I promise to be very good and take up as little room as possible? If you think he can, please wire me here at Yokohama, and I'll come straight down.
Hoping to see you very soon, I am
Your old friend,
RICHARD MELTON MERRIT.
Yuki San turned the letter this way and that, and vainly tried to decipher the strange words. It was undoubtedly English, but not the English she was used to. She ran for her small dictionary and diligently searched out the meaning of each phrase.
Yes, she remembered the boy--he had light hair, and blue eyes that laughed, and he was a big, big boy and carried her on his shoulder.
She sat with the folded letter clasped carefully in her hands and gave herself up to joyous anticipation. A foreign guest was coming to stay two whole months in her house; after that she was to be married and wear her beautiful kimono, and give rich gifts to her father and mother.
Surely Buddha was caring for her! There had been grave moments of doubt about it since she left the mission-school, for he had never seemed to listen, though she prayed him night and day. But he had been only waiting to send all her happiness at once--he was a good god, kind and thoughtful. To-morrow, before the sun touched the big pine- tree on the mountain-top, she would go to the temple and tell him so.
Yuki San's plans found favor with her parents, chiefly because of their great desire to give her pleasure, and incidentally because the board of the foreigner would swell the fund that was needed for her marriage.
The plighted maid to them was already the wife, and the danger of a youthful heart defying tradition and clearing the bars of conventionality to reach its own desire was something unknown to these simple people. The child wished the foreigner to come--they could give her few pleasures--she should have her desire.
The sending of the telegram was the first exciting thing to be attended to. Five times Yuki San rewrote the short message, finding her fingers less deft than her tongue in framing an English sentence. Gravely and with effort she wrote:
"I give you all my house. Your lovely friend, Yuki."
But she shook her head over this and tried again:
"You have the welcome of my heart. Yuki."
This, too, fell short of her ideal, so she decided to send simply two words of which she was quite sure:
"Please come."
The days that followed were crowded with busy preparation. The difficulty of providing the ease and comfort that the presence of so honorable a guest demanded taxed to the utmost Yuki San's resourceful nature. Gaily she set her wits and fingers to work--placing a heavy brass hibachi over a black scorch in the matting, fitting new rice- paper into the small wooden squares of the shoji, and hanging kakemono over the ugly holes made by the missing plaster in the wall.
From one part of the house to another she flitted, laughing and working, while the old garden echoed her happiness and overflowed with blossom and song.
On the day of Merrit's expected arrival, when the last flower had been put in the vases, and the last speck of dust flecked from the matting, Yuki San's keen eyes detected a torn place in the paper door which separated the guest-chamber from the narrow hall.
A puzzled little frown drew her black brows together, but it soon fled before her smile.
"Ah!" she cried, "idea come quickly! I write picture of bamboo on teared place."
With paint and brush she fell to work, and beneath her skilful fingers the ugly tear disappeared in a forest of slender take which stretched away to the foot of a snow-capped mountain.
With a last touch she sank back