“Hush! Not even grandmother shall know yet.”
Grandmother smiled knowingly.
“And now,” said she, “can you say all the big English words—you remember?”
“Yes, yes,” cried Iris, excitedly. At once she began to shout in her most sing-song voice:
“How de do! Ver’ glad see you two days. Thanzs your healt’ is good. Most honorable welcome at Japan. Pray seated be and egscuse the most unworthy house of my fadder.”
Plum Blossom was chanting her welcome before Iris had quite finished.
“Mos’ glad you cum. Come agin. Happy see you. Come agin. Liddle girl, welcome for sister. Liddle boy, too. Nize bebby! Please I will kees. So!”
She indicated the kiss by putting a little, open mouth against her sister’s cheek, leaving a wet spot behind. Iris wiped her cheek carefully with one of her paper handkerchiefs; then as carefully she repowdered the spot where her sister’s moist lips had rested.
Ever since their father had been in America, the family had been learning to speak English. Their teacher was a missionary priest, and now, at the end of three years, even the smallest child could speak the language, though imperfectly. In order to obtain fluency, they had made English the spoken language in the family. The speeches of welcome to the step-mother were composed: by the grandmother; the children had learned them like parrots. Madame Sano tapped both of the little girls on the shoulder and caressed them. Clinging to each other’s sleeves, off they tripped into the other room, where was the great “secret.” The secret consisted of a few articles of American attire, which the little girls had induced a jinrikiman to bring them from Tokio. All of the money Gozo had left behind for them as his parting gift had been expended thus. How the boy’s angry heart would have stormed had he known his little sisters had spent his gift for such a purpose!
Plum Blossom wore a corset outside her kimono. Some one had told her that this was the most important article of a barbarian woman’s wardrobe, and the tighter it was the better. So the little Japanese girl had tied herself by the corset-string to a post. By dint of hard pulling she had managed to encase her plump form so tightly that she could scarcely breathe. Iris, with hands clad in large kid gloves, was drawing on a pair of number five shoes. Her feet were those of the average American child of seven or eight years. At this juncture Miss Summer (who being engaged to Gozo was always called “Miss” by the little girls) opened the shoji and thrust a flushed and excited face between the partitions. She was six months older than when she had wailed aloud her determination not to wash the feet of a barbarian mother-in-law, but she seemed as childish and silly as ever as she came tittering into the room, an enormous straw hat, from which dangled ribbons and bedraggled ostrich-feathers, upon her head. The sisters gasped in admiration, their eyes purple with envy and wonder. Only in pictures had they seen anything so gorgeous as that hat.