In the lighted doorway, as Patricia and her mother stepped from the carriage, she swept him a curtsey.
"Honorably deign to accept my thanks," she said, "for augustly saving my insignificant life! And now, perhaps, we can be properly introduced!"
CHAPTER XI
ISHIKICHI
Under the frail moon that touched the Embassy garden to such beauty, Haru walked home to the house "so-o-o small, an' garden 'bout such big" in the Street-of-Prayer-to-the-Gods.
On Reinanzaka Hill the shadows were iris-hearted. From its high-walled gardens of the great came no glimpses of phantom-lighted shoji, no sound of vibrant strings from tea-houses nor gleams of painted lips and fingers of geisha.
Haru carried a paper-lantern tied to the end of a short wand, but it was not dark enough to need its light, and as she walked, she swung it in graceful circles. She heard a dove sobbing its low owas! owas! and once a crow flapped its sleepy way above her, uttering its harsh note, which, from some subtlety of suggestion hidden from the western mind, the Japanese liken to the accents of love. It startled her for a second; then she began to sing, under her breath, to the tune of her clacking géta, a ditty of her childhood:
| "Karasu, Karasu! | "Crow, crow, |
| Kanzaburo! | Kanzaburo! |
| Oya no on wo— | Forget not the virtue |
| Wasurena yo!" | Of your honorable parents." |