THE DAUGHTER OF A SAMURAI
There was once a daughter of a Samurai who was both beautiful and good. Her name was O Cho San. Her father was dead, and she worked very hard to support her mother who was ill. The mother had trained her daughter in the best of manners, therefore O Cho San had no trouble in finding work.
There was a certain nobleman in need of a maid servant, and he approached O Cho San and asked her to serve him.
“What would my duties be?” inquired the girl as she respectfully bowed to the ground before him. “I must hear, and then I can tell if I can do them.”
“They are all the common duties of a maid,” he replied—“all but one thing, which is most strange. You will have the care of the porcelain plates of my fathers.”
“But that is not a strange duty for a maid,” answered O Cho San. She smiled at him, showing her pretty white teeth and a dimple in one cheek. “I have washed china before this, and always with care.”
“Yet it is the one thing which is most hard,—to find a maid who will attend to this,” he answered. “Know, O Cho San, that the porcelain is priceless. There are twelve plates and each one is perfect. They are so old that they are of the fashion of the Owari potter who learned the secrets of Karatsu and made a flight of cranes across the blue sky.
“The porcelain is so beyond all value that my ancestor made the law that whoever broke a plate should straightway have a finger cut off. So you see the china must be washed with care.”
O Cho San clasped and unclasped her slender brown fingers nervously, then she hid them quite away in the sleeves of her kimono. Her cheek paled a little, but she said bravely, “I will take the place, most honorable sir, and I shall try to keep my fingers.”
Then she thought to herself, “It is not the most desirable of places to live where one loses a finger for each nick of china, but the yen he pays are many more than I can earn elsewhere, and my dear mother must have tea and rice. Besides, it is not likely that such costly porcelain can be often used, and when it is, I shall offer many prayers that it be used in safety.”