But the girl only laughed, and led him out of the room quickly, because the little mother soul in her divined the whole situation. "Of course you may cry, if you wish," she said; "but you must play, too!" And oh, what a delightful play they played together!
But when school was over, and Tarō's grandfather came to take him home, Tarō began to cry again, because it was necessary that he should bid his little playmate good-by.
The grandfather laughed, and exclaimed, "Why, it is little Yoshi,—Miyahara O-Yoshi! Yoshi can come along with us, and stop at the house a while. It is on her way home."
At Tarō's house the playmates ate the promised cake together; and O-Yoshi mischievously asked, mimicking the master's severity, "Uchida Tarō, do you like cake better than me?"
III
O-Yoshi's father owned some neighboring rice-lands, and also kept a shop in the village. Her mother, a samurai, adopted into the Miyahara family at the time of the breaking up of the military caste, had borne several children, of whom O-Yoshi, the last, was the only survivor. While still a baby, O-Yoshi lost her mother. Miyahara was past middle age; but he took another wife, the daughter of one of his own farmers,—a young girl named Ito O-Tama. Though swarthy as new copper, O-Tama was a remarkably handsome peasant girl, tall, strong, and active; but the choice caused surprise, because O-Tama could neither read nor write. The surprise changed to amusement when it was discovered that almost from the time of entering the house she had assumed and maintained absolute control. But the neighbors stopped laughing at Miyahara's docility when they learned more about O-Tama. She knew her husband's interests better than he, took charge of everything, and managed his affairs with such tact that in less than two years she had doubled his income. Evidently, Miyahara had got a wife who was going to make him rich. As a step-mother she bore herself rather kindly, even after the birth of her first boy. O-Yoshi was well cared for, and regularly sent to school.
While the children were still going to school, a long-expected and wonderful event took place. Strange tall men with red hair and beards—foreigners from the West—came down into the valley with a great multitude of Japanese laborers, and constructed a railroad. It was carried along the base of the low hill range, beyond the rice-fields and mulberry groves in the rear of the village; and almost at the angle where it crossed the old road leading to the temple of Kwannon, a small station-house was built; and the name of the village was painted in Chinese characters upon a white signboard erected on a platform. Later, a line of telegraph-poles was planted, parallel with the railroad. And still later, trains came, and shrieked, and stopped, and passed,—nearly shaking the Buddhas in the old cemetery off their lotus-flowers of stone.
The children wondered at the strange, level, ash-strewn way, with its double lines of iron shining away north and south into mystery; and they were awe-struck by the trains that came roaring and screaming and smoking, like storm-breathing dragons, making the ground quake as they passed by. But this awe was succeeded by curious interest,—an interest intensified by the explanations of one of their school-teachers, who showed them, by drawings on the blackboard, how a locomotive engine was made; and who taught them, also, the still more marvelous operation of the telegraph, and told them how the new western capital and the sacred city of Kyoto were to be united by rail and wire, so that the journey between them might be accomplished in less than two days, and messages sent from the one to the other in a few seconds.
Taro and O-Yoshi became very dear friends. They studied together, played together, and visited each other's homes. But at the age of eleven O-Yoshi was taken from school to assist her step-mother in the household; and thereafter Tarō saw her but seldom. He finished his own studies at fourteen, and began to learn his father's trade. Sorrows came. After having given him a little brother, his mother died; and in the same year, the kind old grandfather who had first taken him to school followed her; and after these things the world seemed to him much less bright than before. Nothing further changed his life till he reached his seventeenth year. Occasionally he would visit the home of the Miyahara, to talk with O-Yoshi. She had grown up into a slender, pretty woman; but for him she was still only the merry playfellow of happier days.