"Where are the blossoms?" he demanded, suddenly turning in his chair. "You said they came down thick and white and that I could let them fall over my face."
Seki San did not answer, she was kneeling beside a very disconsolate figure that lay on the bed with face buried in the pillows. When June spoke, his mother sat up and pushed back her tumbled hair. She was a very little mother with round eyes and lips as red as June's, only now her eyes were red and her lips trembling.
"You may go in the other room, Seki San," she said, "I want to talk to June by himself."
June sidled up cautiously and took a seat near her on the bed. The one unbearable catastrophe to him was for his mother to cry. It was like an earthquake, it shook the very foundations on which all his joys were built. Sometimes when the postman forgot to leave a letter, and occasionally when he was sick longer than usual, mother cried. But those were dark, dreadful times that he tried not to think about. Why the tears should come on this day of all days he could not understand.
She put her arm around him and held him close for a long time before she spoke. He could feel the thump, thump of her heart as he leaned against her.
"June," she said at last, "you are going to be a soldier like father, aren't you?"
June's eyes brightened. "Yes, and carry a sword!" he said.
"There is something more than a sword that a soldier has to have."
"A gun?"
Mother shook her head. "It's courage, June! It's something I haven't got a scrap of. You'll have to be brave for us both!"