Flushed and disappointed the princess sat down breathlessly on the grass beneath a cherry tree. She had been seated but a moment, when the tree above her began to shake and a score of ripe cherries descended upon her head. She sprang to her feet, and looking upward saw a roguish face peering down at her from the cherry tree. The face belonged to a boy of possibly fourteen years. He was laughing with delight at the amazed and frightened face of the little princess, and he kept pelting her with cherries, some of which actually broke on her small Imperial person. As, however, Sado-ko continued to gaze up at him in that frightened manner, he sprang to the ground, rolled himself about on the grass for a spell, and then turned several somersaults so grotesque that Sado-ko forgot her fear and burst into childish laughter, clapping her hands delightedly as he came to his feet before her. They were both laughing heartily now, as they surveyed each other. The boy’s sleeves and the front of his obi were filled with cherries, so that his figure was a succession of grotesque bunches. There were cherry stains, too, on his face, particularly in the region of his laughing mouth, through which Sado-ko saw the whitest of teeth gleaming. He had brown eyes, and soft silky hair, unshaven in the centre of his head, as was the case with the palace attendants. Gradually as the princess surveyed him she became grave.
“Who are you?” she said at last. “What is your honorable name, and where do you live?”
“I am Kamura Junzo,” said the boy, “and I live over yonder.” He waved his hand toward the wall.
“On the other side?” inquired Sado-ko in an awed voice. He nodded.
“I know who you are,” he continued.
“I am the Princess Sado-ko,” said the child, gravely.
“Yes,” said the boy, “and the august Sun was your ancestor. You live shut up in this place all alone, and no one plays with you.”
“I have my honorable dear birds and butterflies,” she said.
He looked at her curiously.
“Yes, I have heard you singing to them.”