THE BLACK SHIPS
The night before we sailed my Tokyo uncle called, bringing with him a package of "friendship ribbons" for the children—those frail, dainty, quivery strips that bind the hands of friends between deck and dock at the moment of starting—and parting.
"I'll hold a pink one for Toshiko and a blue one for Kuni San," cried Chiyo, as the bright-coloured rolls tumbled out of the package, "and a white one for my teacher and a purple one for—for you, Uncle Tosa! Two of the most beautiful for you, of any colour you choose!"
"I'll hold a whole bunch of red and white ones for all Japan!" said Hanano. "Love, much love, and good-bye; for I'll never come back. I love everybody here, but I'm going to stay for ever with Grandma in 'Home, Sweet Home,'" and she softly hummed the tune as she slipped away, her face full of light. Ah, how little she dreamed that in years to come she would return—more than once—and always with a heart full of double loyalty: half for the land of her birth and half for the land of love, where were husband, children, and home.
Hanano and Chiyo had gone to bed, and I was attending to the last scattered duties of the packing when Sudzu lifted a folded shawl to lay on top of the tray before closing a trunk.
"This is rather loose," she said. "A cushion would exactly fit; but how ridiculous it would be to carry to a great country like America just an ordinary cushion that we sit on."
She did not know that in the bottom of my trunk of greatest value was something which, until I had seen it in Sister's godown, I had never dreamed could be anywhere except beside the familiar fire-box in the room of Honourable Grandmother. It was a square, flat cushion of blue brocade, old and somewhat faded.
I was alone when I wrapped it for its long journey, and, as my hands passed over the silken flowers, my mind went back—back to the day when a little black-haired girl in wooden clogs clattered through the big gateway and, hurrying her polite bows of greeting to the family, spread out before her grandmother, who was seated on this very cushion, a large, flat book.
"Honourable Grandmother," she said, pointing to a coloured map of the world, "I am much, much troubled. I have just learned that our beloved land is only a few tiny islands in the great world."