Boys Playing Marbles. Page 12.
Perhaps they would not have thought to go home at all if Umé had not remembered the tea-party in honor of her birthday. Her father was to come home from his shop earlier than usual, so that the family might drink tea together.
"Come, Tei," she said at last, "it is nearly the hour of tea-drinking. Let us go home."
Obedient Tei turned at once, saying only, "It would have been good to read the fairy story in the picture-book."
But Umé had not heard what Tei said. For the first time in many hours she was thinking of the koto practice.
"Did you ever do anything disobedient, Tei?" she asked.
Tei thought very hard for a few moments. "Yes," she said at last, "I once put the cherry blossoms into the chrysanthemum vase when the honorable mother told me not to do so."
Umé looked at Tei in surprise. "But how could you?" she asked. "They must have hurt your intelligent eyes after you put them there."
Tei shook her head. "I thought they looked pretty," she confessed.
Umé looked doubtful. After a moment she said, "I could never have put them in that vase; it would have looked wrong from the first. But I ran away from my koto practice to-day, perhaps that was just as bad."