CHAPTER X.
This morning we have had a visit from mother-in-law and the little monkey of an Aki. It appears that Kotmasu has told her—and what is more, has made her at last believe—that we are really going away to England.
Mother-in-law is unlearned except in the housekeeper’s art, and this conveys nothing very definite as regards locality to her mind. England, Europe even, is as indefinite a place as the Shinto heaven. Somewhere out beyond the harbour, which she can see from our verandah, even beyond green-wooded Hoyaki and Cape Nomo, but that is all she knows or can imagine. We are going away, therefore she will not be the further recipient of the “handsome presents” in which her soul delights. I quite comprehend that this is the direction her thoughts will take, and it is really to assure herself that Kotmasu’s statement is absolutely true that she has toiled up the hillside in the hot sun so early in the day.
Why she has brought Aki to the family council I cannot conceive; but Aki has brought a tortoise about the size of a silver dollar, with which he contentedly plays in the sun on the verandah, where I can see his funny little shaven head, with its tufts of black hair, bobbing about, above the edge of the lower half of our sliding-panel window as we talk. No doubt he has brought some fantastically shaped and gorgeously coloured doughtoy out from the folds of his outer garment to keep the tortoise company.
“So you are going away?” says mother-in-law in Japanese, Mousmé’s efforts to teach her even a few words of English having proved quite unavailing.
“Yes,” I reply; “we are going to England soon.”
I somehow feel as though I were committing a robbery; and her next remark serves rather to deepen my disquietude.
“You are going to take my daughter with you, honourable sir?”
“Yes.”