"It will never do for the dolls to see such unworthy actions," Umé told Tei. "They will think it is all a part of the august tea-ceremony."
It was much easier to teach the dolls without the baby's help, and there was everything to teach them with. There was a toy kitchen with its charcoal brazier, its brushes and dishes. There was a toy work-box with thread, needles and silk.
There were toy quilts and wooden pillows and flower vases; and there were toy jinrikishas with their runners.
Umé and Tei taught the dolls the proper bowings for the street and those for the house. They changed the food on the trays, and taught the girl dolls that they must most carefully wait upon the boy dolls, as Umé herself had been taught to wait upon Tara, although she was older than her brother.
Umé even read aloud with much emphasis from the "Book of Learning for Women": "Let the children be always taught to speak the simple truth, to stand upright in their proper places, and to listen with respectful attention."
There are many other directions in the book, all of which the little women of Japan learn by heart. Umé would have read many of the rules to the dolls, but her mother called both children to leave their play and go with the grandmother and old Maru to listen to story-telling in the street of theaters.
"It is a very different thing to tell the simple truth at one time and to listen to honorable stories at another," said Umé to the dolls as she left them.
In the street of theaters are many little booths in which there are men who tell the most enchanting stories. Sometimes they tell fairy stories, sometimes ghost stories, and sometimes stories of Japanese gods and heroes. Umé and Tei liked the fairy stories best of all.
"The old man in this booth tells fairy stories faithfully well," said the grandmother as they stopped before a tiny house decorated with paper parasols and lanterns, and with a long red banner floating above it from a bamboo pole.
"Honorably deign to enter," said a little woman crouching at the door.