Saying this, he turned round to his wife, who whispered in his ear: “I quite agree with you: if he be swallowed up by the shark, we couldn’t possibly get another like him; send some other one instead!”
Just then in came the girl, attended by Sadakichi, who had long been waiting for the boy, and said, “Bunkichi, please be quick and make me another dragon-fly.”
Her mother, however, at once stopped the girl, saying: “Come, come; Bunkichi has something else to think about besides dragon-flies: he’s just saying that he wants to go out to sea and kill the wanizame.”
The girl was startled, for she was only a child. “Does he go alone?”
“Yes, that is what he says he will do.”
“Don’t, please, mother; I don’t like your sending him to sea.”
“Why, my child?”
“I want him to make me a bamboo dragon-fly.”
His curiosity aroused at hearing the little girl speak of the dragon-fly, the father said, “What do you wish him to make for you?”
“Oh, father, it’s a bamboo dragon-fly—an amusing toy which flies up high, whizzing,” was her confident answer.