Tonase. If you please.
Recitative. Hearing her voice, the servant Rin slips off her tasuki[3] and rushes to the door, which formerly would have been answered by an usher.
Tonase. Is this Master Oboshi Yuranosuke’s home? If so, pray, tell him that I am Tonase, Kakogawa Honzo’s wife; I have long neglected to call; but I have come a great distance to-day as there is something for which I desire to see him.
Recitative. Then she turns round and makes the bearers bring the palanquin beside her. She calls her daughter. And with such a smile as smiles the bush-warbler when he flies out of the depths of the valley to find the plum-tree all a-flower, out comes Konami, with a head-covering almost concealing her eyes.
Konami. Are we already at Master Rikiya’s home? I feel too shy.
Recitative. The room is put in order, and the servant comes to the door to bid them enter.
Tonase. The palanquin-bearers may now go home. Please, show us in.
Recitative. Konami keeps close to her mother and sits down with her; and the next moment Oishi calmly enters to meet them.
Oishi. You ladies are welcome. I should have called long ago; but you have no doubt heard of our present condition, and I am ashamed to be visited in such a home.
Tonase. You are too formal. Though we see each other for the first time to-day, since your son, Master Rikiya and my daughter Konami were betrothed, you and I are now connections, and we need not stand upon ceremony to each other.