"And I," laughed his wife, doing the same.
"What!" cried the soldier. "I am taller than you are."
Then Hoshiko understood that she ought not to have said that. It was heinous to make herself the equal of her lord in anything.
"No, lord," she hastened to say, "I lied—a little lie—while we sported. I am sorry."
"It is no lie," laughed happy Arisuga once more; for you will remember that all her daintiness was then his, and that he was not like other Japanese husbands; "we are exactly the same height."
"No, no, no, lord," pleaded Hoshiko, who fearfully knew that it was so, "you are much taller than miserable small me."
And, to prove it, she bent her knees within her kimono and stood beside him, for he had risen to prove the matter.
But he detected the bent knees and straightened them, and, lo! there was not a shadow of difference in their height.
And when the little soldier laughed and was very happy about it, she laughed too, timorously at first, then more joyously than he. For to be his equal in something, and to see him happy about it—well, she supposed that no Japanese girl had ever before such felicity, and perhaps she was right.
So, in their playing and laughter, he cried: