“But it is not a lonesome prison here,” said the princess, “and outside it is very cold and miserable, for her Majesty has told me so.”
“Oh, well, let us play it is so.”
And so they played together until past noon, when the maid and gardener were both sent to seek the Princess Sado-ko, who was chasing butterflies. They rescued her just as the “prince” was about to carry her over the walls, upon the top of which he had placed her, by climbing up in the cherry tree and across a bough which sloped to the wall.
The rescued princess stamped her foot angrily at the gardener when he threatened the boy, who laughed jeeringly from the top of the wall; and she scolded the maid when that menial drew her by the hand from the scene. She would not leave the vicinity of the wall until the boy had disappeared completely, which he did by jumping off to the other side. Then she burst into tears for fear he had come to harm in the wicked world without.
Thereafter a close watch was kept upon her movements, and she was not permitted to go near that portion of the walls where stood the cherry-tree castle. Often she heard the boy whistling from that direction, and once she awoke in the night, because she had dreamed that he was calling her name, “Sado-ko! Sado-ko!” After that life was a little more lonesome for the Child of the Sun.
CHAPTER II
AN EMPEROR’S PROMISE
