Umé San in Japan

by Etta Blaisdell McDonald; Julia Dalrymple

Umé's bed was made, as are all Japanese beds, by spreading a quilted puff upon the floor. With another puff over her, and a wooden block on which to rest her head, the little girl slept as comfortably as most people sleep on mattresses and soft pillows.

Umé laughed softly now as she folded the puffs away in their closet. "There are still many things to make my birthday a happy one," she said to herself. "There will be a game with Cousin Tei after breakfast, and perhaps she will give me a gift." She said the last words in a whisper, so that her mother would not hear. No matter how much she might long for a gift, it was not becoming in her to speak of it beforehand.

She was sure that there would be gifts from her father and mother and from the respected grandmother. That was to be expected, and had even been hinted. The grandmother had mentioned an envelope of paper handkerchiefs the very day before, after Umé had made an unusually graceful bow to her.

In her heart Umé wanted most a pair of little American shoes, but she had never dared to ask for them because her father did not like the dress of the American women. In fact, he often told Umé to observe carefully how much more graceful and attractive the kimono is than the strange clothing worn by the foreign people.

The little girl sighed as she remembered it. Just then she heard her father's step in the next room and turned quickly to bow before him.

The maids had brought several lacquered trays into the room, one for each member of the family, and had set them near together on the floor. Each tray had short legs, three or four inches high, and looked like a toy table. On the tray was placed a pair of chopsticks, a dainty china bowl and a tiny cup. Now one maid was beginning to fill the bowls with boiled rice and another was pouring tea into the cups.

All three children remained standing until the father entered the room. Then each one, even Baby San, bowed before him, kneeling on the floor and touching his forehead to the mat and saying, "Good morning, honorable Father."

To their mother the children bowed in the same way, and also to their grandmother when she came into the room. Everything would have been most quiet and proper but for the baby. She liked to bump her little forehead on the floor so well that she kept on kotowing to old black Tama, the tailless cat, who stalked into the room. As if that were not enough, she bowed to each one of the breakfast trays until her mother seated her before one of them and gave her a pair of tiny chopsticks.

Then there was the waiting until the grandmother and the father and mother were served, which seemed to the baby to take too long a time. She beat the tray with her chopsticks and called for the rice-cakes even as they were disappearing down the honorable throat of her father.

Tara laughed. He was very fond of his little sister. That she should do such an unheard-of thing as to demand cakes from her father seemed to him exceedingly funny. His father smiled, too.