“Not less than twenty-five gold rio,[11]” said Chobei. “It is a fortune! There is but one way in which we might obtain it. We might sell Iroka.”
“Sell my daughter!” cried Tsuiu. “My lord, my lord!” and she wept bitterly. Chobei wept also, but at last he said,
“It is terrible for me as well as for you, but do you not see that there is no other way?”
“There is no other way,” said Tsuiu, to whom the will of her lord was law.
Then they told Iroka all the story and she said,
“Honorable parents, there is no other way. Permit me to be sold, for it is an honor for me to become a geisha for the debt of my parents.”
Therefore, with many tears, they sold Iroka and, as she was very pretty, they obtained for her the sum of five and twenty gold rio.
This Chobei bore to Bun-yemon who refused to take it; but Chobei, pretending to restore it to his own pocket, slipped it into a lacquered box and departed. After he was gone, the wife of Bun-yemon found the money, and her husband was very angry with her, that she had not watched more carefully.
“This good fellow should never have given me the money,” he said. “He is poor—only a waste-paper man. I will not take it for anything. You must carry it back.”
“But I know not where he lives,” said the wife. “And since you have the money, let me go to the pawnshop and redeem your jeweled sword, that we may sell the sword for a larger sum. Then we can pay back Chobei and still have something for ourselves.”