"They must be glad to come to Japan and learn so many new ways to be happy, O Ba San," she said.
The grandmother did not quite understand Umé's way of thinking. "In what way?" she asked.
"To ride among the beautiful cherry trees, with their delicious pink odors, in the beginning," said Umé. "I know that in no other country can the trees be so lovely and hold so many flowers."
As if her father knew that Umé longed to see something of the foreign children's play, he stopped his own jinrikisha man at that very moment, and the rest of his party stopped beside him.
Under a particularly large and beautiful cherry tree a group of both foreign and Japanese children were gathered around a peddler who carried a tray of candies upon his head. In one hand he held a drum and on his shoulder perched a monkey dressed in a bright colored kimono.
The man danced and sang a funny song about the troubles of Daruma, a snow man. Once in a while he beat the drum, and all the time he was jumping and twisting about until it seemed as if his tray of candies must surely fall off his head to the ground; but it never did.
When the monkey jumped from his master's shoulder and snatched off one of the boys' caps, putting it on his own head, all the people, big and little, screamed with joy.
By that time a great crowd of merrymakers had collected, and Umé's father told his coolie to go on. So the little party started on again, and soon passed an open space among the trees where Japanese fireworks were shooting into the air. The Japanese send off their fireworks in the daytime, as well as at night, to make their festivals more festive.
The swish of the quick flight of a rocket into the air made every one look up. In a moment a big paper bird popped out of the rocket and came sailing slowly down to light on the top of one of the trees.
Then another rocket, and still another, was sent up, and from one came a golden dragon with a long red tongue and a still longer tail.