"It's better," exclaimed Nancy, "because it makes one so much happier to look at chrysanthemums and red maples than to try and understand why the sum of the three angles of a triangle of any old size must always equal two right angles. What makes one happy is far more educational than what makes one aggravated."
Here was a Pagan theory that Elinor felt inclined to doubt.
"We shall have to study double time all during the Christmas holidays," she said.
"It will be rather fun, I think," put in Billie, always the optimist of the quartette. "We'll all just have a small private school of four and jump in and work together. To me, working together is almost as nice as playing together. I suppose I appreciate it more than the rest of you because I had to work and play alone for so many years."
"Billie, you are a perfect dear," ejaculated Nancy. "You furnish all the amusement and fun and thank us for sharing it with you."
Billie looked as pleased and happy as if she had never had a compliment before in her life. The joy of having regained Nancy after that brief eclipse into shadow was still too recent to be forgotten. The two girls exchanged one of those telegraphic glances of intimate friends who need no words to express their meaning.
"We've had a wonderful time," broke in Mary. "There is something about the land that makes one forget the realities. If poor little Kenkyo hadn't died—"
"Be careful! Onoye is in the next room," interrupted Billie, lifting a warning finger.
Onoye had indeed been the wife of Yoritomo as Billie had guessed. No doubt it was poor old O'Haru who had thrown the stone into the summer house that day. Billie had mercifully never inquired. And now the little son, for whom the two women had yearned with a passion that is extraordinarily deep in Japanese women, had been gathered to his forefathers. Onoye was dumb and silent with misery during his brief illness. When he died, she had disappeared for a few days and returned at last calm and still. No one had seen her shed a tear. Yoritomo, it was said, was stricken with the wildest grief. But sorrow had cleared his brain and brought him to his senses. He had made a really manly apology to Mr. Campbell and had even asked that Onoye might be restored to him. But this was not to be. Miss Campbell had taken Onoye under her wing.
"I want you to go back to America with me and be educated, child," said the kind little lady, "and after a few years, you may return to Japan and teach the women here how to be independent."