"Whatever is that?" asked Asako.
"Dear Mrs. Barrington, are you a daughter of Japan, and have never heard of the Twenty-four Children?"
"No; who are they?"
"They are model children, the paragons of goodness, celebrated because of their love for their fathers and mothers. One of them walked miles and miles every day to get water from a certain spring for his sick mother; another, when a tiger was going to eat his father, rushed to the animal and cried, 'No, eat me instead!' Little boys and girls in Japan are always being told to be like the Twenty-four Children."
"Oh, how I'd hate them!" cried Asako.
"That is because you are a rebellious, individualistic Englishwoman. You have lost that sense of family union, which makes good Japanese, brothers and cousins and uncles and aunts, all love each other publicly, however much they may hate each other in private."
"That is very hypocritical!"
"It is the social law," replied Kamimura. "In Japan the family is the important thing. You and I are nothing. If you want to get on in the world you must always be subject to your family. Then you are sure to get on however stupid you may be. In England you seem to use your families chiefly to quarrel with."
"I think our relatives ought to be just our best friends," said Asako.
"They are that too in a way," the young man answered. "In Japan it would be better to be born without hands and feet than to be born without relatives."