Little Sister Snow - Frances Little

YOKOHAMA.

Miss YUKI INOUYE—

Dear Miss Inouye: I wonder if you remember an American boy with whom you had an encounter in your very early days, because he dared to thwart your plans concerning a cat? I remember it very well, and the jolly picnics and excursions that you and my mother and I took together afterward.

I hope you have not forgotten me, for I am going to claim the privilege of the conqueror in that old battle and ask a favor of you. My Government has sent me out to your country on some important business, and finding there was no hotel close to my work, I wrote to the school where my mother and I visited twelve years ago, and asked them to recommend a family that would be good enough to take me in for two months. Strangely enough your father's name was suggested, and when I read that the only daughter both spoke and wrote English, and that her name was Yuki San, my mind flew back to my "Little Sister Snow" of the days gone by.

Could your father manage to accommodate me for a couple of months, if I promise to be very good and take up as little room as possible? If you think he can, please wire me here at Yokohama, and I'll come straight down.

Hoping to see you very soon, I am

Your old friend,

RICHARD MELTON MERRIT.

Yuki San turned the letter this way and that, and vainly tried to decipher the strange words. It was undoubtedly English, but not the English she was used to. She ran for her small dictionary and diligently searched out the meaning of each phrase.

Yes, she remembered the boy—he had light hair, and blue eyes that laughed, and he was a big, big boy and carried her on his shoulder.

She sat with the folded letter clasped carefully in her hands and gave herself up to joyous anticipation. A foreign guest was coming to stay two whole months in her house; after that she was to be married and wear her beautiful kimono, and give rich gifts to her father and mother.

Surely Buddha was caring for her! There had been grave moments of doubt about it since she left the mission-school, for he had never seemed to listen, though she prayed him night and day. But he had been only waiting to send all her happiness at once—he was a good god, kind and thoughtful. To-morrow, before the sun touched the big pine- tree on the mountain-top, she would go to the temple and tell him so.

Yuki San's plans found favor with her parents, chiefly because of their great desire to give her pleasure, and incidentally because the board of the foreigner would swell the fund that was needed for her marriage.

The plighted maid to them was already the wife, and the danger of a youthful heart defying tradition and clearing the bars of conventionality to reach its own desire was something unknown to these simple people. The child wished the foreigner to come—they could give her few pleasures—she should have her desire.

The sending of the telegram was the first exciting thing to be attended to. Five times Yuki San rewrote the short message, finding her fingers less deft than her tongue in framing an English sentence. Gravely and with effort she wrote:

"I give you all my house. Your lovely friend, Yuki."