"I will send you in good Tanaka's 'rikisha, he will take good care of you and bring you back at tiffin time."
June was greatly excited over the prospect and stood unusually still while Seki San buttoned him into a starchy white blouse and pinned a scarlet flower in his buttonhole.
"Can't I pin my flag on too?" he begged, and Seki, who could not bear to refuse him anything, fastened the bit of red, white and blue silk on the other side.
"Now keep your body still," cautioned Seki San as she put him in the jinrikisha and gave final instructions to Tanaka who was bowing and grinning and bowing again, "Tanaka will wait for you, and you must come when he calls you. Be good little boy! Sayonara!"
June had never felt so important in his life. To be going out all by himself in a jinrikisha was quite like being grown up. The only thing lacking to make him quite happy was a pair of reins that he might imagine he was driving a horse instead of a little brown man with fat bare legs and a big mushroom hat who looked around every few moments to see if he was falling out.
They trotted along the sunny streets, passing the temple grounds where the green and red Nio made ugly faces all the day, and where the greedy pigeons were waiting for more corn. They passed over the long bridge, skirted the parade ground, then went winding in and out of narrow streets until they came to a stretch of country road that ran beside a moat.
Here there was less to see and June amused himself by repeating the few Japanese words he had learned. "Ohayo" meant "good-morning," and it was great fun to call it out to the children they passed and see them bow and call back "Ohayo" in friendly greeting. He knew another word too, it was "Arigato," and it meant "thank you." He used it on Tanaka every time he stopped by the wayside to pluck a flower for him. Once when they rested June saw a queer old tree, with a very short body and very long arms that seemed to be seeing how far they could reach. June thought the tree must have the rheumatism, for it was standing on crutches, and had knots on its limbs just like Monsieur had on his fingers. But the strange part of it was that from nearly every branch fluttered a small strip of paper with something written on it. June had seen this before on other trees, and he remembered that Seki San had told him that these little papers were poems hung there when the tree was covered with cherry blossoms.
Now June always wanted to do everything anybody else did, so when they started off again, he decided that he would make up a poem to hang on the tree as they came back. He knew one that he had learned from a big boy coming over on the steamer, and he said it over softly to himself:
"King Solomon was the wisest man;