Now, for the benefit of her mother, whom she knew to be still behind the fusuma, Hoshiko tried to look very severe. She had taken the poppies from behind her ear and had pinned a napkin about her hair, and turned up the sleeves of her kimono, making herself all the lovelier as she very well knew in this fashion of a nurse.
"You are to wash your hands in this cold water to refresh you. Then I will take it away and bring you other water for your face."
But, in the end, she washed his hands for him, and his face, too, amid a great deal of laughter and splashing.
"And now," he said, "I will take every advantage of my defenceless enemy. I will make her give me my breakfast."
Though she demurred, Hoshiko was quite mad to do it.
"Beware!" she whispered, as she let a persimmon slip from between her chopsticks into his mouth. "In the East, walls have not only ears but eyes!"
"And no conscience!"
"What would you?"
She hoped that he might desire walls without senses, where they might be fearlessly alone.
"Another persimmon!" he laughed.