"I am glad of the honorable baby," said Umé, "because now you are permitted to share the Festival of the Dolls with me."
"Yes," added Tei, "and I am also permitted to go to the shops to-day and buy a new doll. See all the sen the august father gave me this morning," and Tei took a handful of coins from her sleeve pocket.
Umé clapped her hands. "We will go as soon as all the dolls have had their breakfast," she said. "I will strap Haru on my back, and you shall strap your new doll on your back, and we will play that they are truly babies."
She sprang to her feet as she said it, and danced up and down the room, clapping her hands and singing a queer little tune.
"I have the most honorably best time in the whole year when the Dolls' Festival comes," she cried.
It was not to be wondered at. Then all the dolls and toys and games that little girls love to play with are set out on the shelves in the honorable guest room; and for three days they have a holiday from school and play all the day long.
The doll-shops are always merry with children waiting to buy dolls and crowded with dolls waiting to be bought. But there were so many interesting things to see in the streets that Tei and Umé were a long time in reaching the doll-shop.
Once they stopped to watch the firemen who ran past them on their way to a fire.
The fire-stations in Tokio are tall ladders which are made to stand upright in the street, with a tub at the top in which the watchman sits. This tub looks like a crow's-nest on the mast of a vessel. Beside it is a big bell which the watchman strikes when he sees a fire anywhere.
The firemen run through the streets headed by a man carrying a large paper standard, which they place near the burning house. They are very helpful in saving the women and children, but as they dislike to desert their standard they are not always of much use in putting out the fire.