“What for does he go so often to the toko no ma,” she asked herself, “and what has he got there? I should be glad enough to know.” Not being one to suffer much in silence, she very soon asked her husband these same things.
He told her the truth, the good young man. “And now I have my dear old father home again, I’m as happy as the day is long,” he says.
“H’m,” she says.
“And wasn’t two bu cheap,” he says, “and wasn’t it a strange thing altogether?”
“Cheap, indeed,” says she, “and passing strange; and why, if I may ask,” she says, “did you say nought of all this at the first?”
The young man grew red.
“Indeed, then, I cannot tell you, my dear,” he says. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know,” and with that he went out to his work.
Up jumped Mistress Tassel the minute his back was turned, and to the toko no ma she flew on the wings of the wind and flung open the doors with a clang.
“My green silk for sleeve-linings!” she cried at once; “but I don’t see any old father here, only a white wooden box. What can he keep in it?”
She opened the box quickly enough.