"What do you do all day, O'Kami San?" asked Elinor.
"Much honorable work," answered the Japanese girl. "Cook-ing; sew-ing"; she pointed to her kimono; "mu-seek; book-stu-dee. Ah, much work to become wife."
"You are not thinking of marrying, surely? Your brother says you are only sixteen," protested Mary.
O'Kami nodded her head and smiled.
"Arrange all the day before to this."
"Do you love him?" asked Mary, in an awed tone of voice.
O'Kami looked puzzled. The word "love" she had not learned.
"O'Kami much happy. Honorable mother of husband not any more. Gone." She pointed up.
"Goodness!" broke in Elinor. "She means that there will be no mother-in-law, so the marriage is sure to be a happy one. What a mother-in-law ridden place this country is!"
She spoke too rapidly for the Japanese girl to grasp the meaning of any word except "mother-in-law."