“I thought you would only require her whilst you remained in Nagasaki.”
I have never yet succeeded in making my mother-in-law understand the permanency of my attachment, and I do not hope to accomplish the feat now; but I explain, hinting that there will be “handsome presents” to all the members of her (for me inconveniently large) household when we take our departure.
This, if nothing else, she comprehends; and she offers no further objection to Mousmé’s accompanying me.
In many respects I like this queer little painted doll of a mother-in-law, who has really wonderfully beautiful brown hair, and a childish way and smile, notwithstanding her seven children, and underlying native rapacity on a small and engagingly frank scale. So I suggest that Mousmé and I shall give a farewell entertainment to my Japanese relations, and this idea meets with her most cordial approval.
I smile to myself at having mollified her so easily, and reflect that, as Kotmasu once philosophically remarked, marriage was cheaper after all, and I should have no cash payment to make for permission to take Mousmé with me.
Mother-in-law is quite content now, and as firmly convinced as ever that I am a “velly much rich honourable English sir,” for thus Oka always describes me. She insists upon prostrating herself most outrageously, to the disarrangement of her obi, on the end of which she unfortunately steps when she takes her leave, which she does as soon as she is satisfied that it is really my intention to ask all my relations to a farewell fête.
Mousmé is, I fancy, a little alarmed at the prospect; for as soon as her mother has gone with Aki weeping at her side, and apparently refusing to be comforted by his mother’s more or less specious promises, because of the disappearance of his tortoise, which has doubtless fallen down amongst Oka’s progeny through a crack in the verandah floor, she exclaims in an awe-struck voice:
“Cy-reel, do you know how many there are?”
“No,” I am forced to admit.