"I will ask to be forgiven when we are in the temple," said Umé penitently.
She was still serious when she dropped a rin into the grated box that waits always for offerings in the temples.
"May I write a prayer to the goddess Kwannon?" she asked, as the coin clinked against others in the box.
"Is there something you very much desire, Umé-ko?" asked her mother with a smile.
Umé nodded. "There is something I have asked from every one of the gods and goddesses you have ever told me about," she said. "I have been asking for it constantly ever since my last plum-blossom birthday."
"Kwannon is the goddess of mercy; perhaps she will be merciful to you and grant your wish, whatever it may be," said her mother.
So Umé wrote her wish on a slip of paper and hung it where hundreds of other prayers were hanging on a lattice in front of a shrine.
Afterwards she went with her mother to the corner where the god Binzuru was waiting to cure any sort of disease.
Umé's mother had an ache in her back. She rubbed her hand gently over the back of the god and then tried to rub her own back; but it was not easy to reach between her shoulders and rub the pain away. After she finished reaching, her back ached more than before.
"We will go to the gardens at Dango-Zaka; there we shall forget our aches in looking at the lovely flowers," she told Umé.