The House of the Misty Star | Page 8

did not tell him that I was about as familiar with young girls from my home land as I was with young eagles, for the undaunted spirit of that child had aroused all my love of adventure; and I wanted to see her. Then, too, I was haunted by the picture of a lonely girl in a strange land, crying out in the night for her dead father.
I was trembling with new emotion that evening when I brought my invalid in from the garden, and tucked her into bed.
Kishimoto San had not only offered me a tremendous experience, but all unwittingly he made it easily possible for me to defy the tradition of his picture language, and risk Jane Gray as a permanent fireside companion.

III
ZURA
Just below "The House of the Misty Star," in an old temple, a priest played a merry tattoo on a mighty gong early every morning. First one stroke and a pause, then two strokes and a pause, followed by so many strokes without pause that the sounds merged into one deep mellow tone reaching from temple to distant hills. It was, so to speak, the rising bell for the deities in that district and announced to them the beginning of their day of business.
In years gone by the echo of the music had stirred me only to a drowsy thankfulness that I was no goddess, happy as I turned for a longer sleep. The morning after Kishimoto San's visit, long before any sound disturbed the sleeping gods, from my window I watched the Great Dipper drop behind the crookedest old pine in the garden and heard the story of the night-wind as it whispered its secret to the leaves.
Usually my patience was short with people who went mooning around the house at all hours of the night when they should have been sleeping. Somehow though, things seemed changed and changing. Coming events were not casting shadows before them in my home, but thrills. Formerly I had not even a passing acquaintance with thrills. Now, half a century behind-time, they were beginning to burst in upon me all at once, as would a troop of merry friends bent on giving me a surprise party, and the things they seemed to promise kept me awake half the night. My restlessness must have penetrated the thin partition of my Japanese house, for when I went out to breakfast there sat Jane Gray, very small and pale, but as bright-eyed and perky as a sparrow. It was her first appearance at the morning meal.
Before I could ask why she had not rested as usual, she put a question to me. "Well, what is it?"
"What's what?" I returned.
"Why," she exclaimed, "you have been up most of the night. I wanted to ask if you were ill, but I was counting sheep jumping over the fence, and it made me so sleepy I mixed you up with them. I hope it isn't the precious cod-liver babies that are keeping you awake."
It was at Jane's suggestion that we had eliminated meat from our menu and established a kind of liquid food station for the ill-nourished offspring of the quarry women near us.
I assured Miss Gray that babies had been far from my thoughts. Then I told her of my interview with Kishimoto San; of how Zura Wingate had come to her grandfather's house; of her rebellion against things that were; and that she was to come to me for private study. Had I not been so excited over the elements of romance in my story, I would have omitted telling Jane of the incident of the girl and the youth in the park, for it had a wonderful effect on her.
Jane's sentiment was like a full molasses pitcher that continues to drip in spite of all the lickings you give it. At once I saw I was in for an overflow. It was the only part of the story she took in, and as she listened, passed into some kind of a spell. She cuddled down into her chair and shut her eyes like a child in the ecstasies of a fairy story. She barely breathed enough to say, "The darlings! and in that lovely old park! I hope it was moonlight. Do you suppose they sat under the wistaria?"
Not for a copper mine would I have hinted that through the night there had come before my mind a picture very like that. Such a picture in the Orient could only be labeled tragedy; the more quickly it was blotted out from mind and reality the better for all concerned. I spoke positively to my companion.
"Look here, Jane Gray, if it wasn't for breaking a commandment I would call you foolish with one syllable. Don't you know that in this country a young