"Time—and—art," repeated Sunny, like a child learning a lesson. She comprehended time, but she had inherited none of the Japanese traits of patience. She would have wished to leap over that first obstacle to beauty. Art, she comprehended, as a physical aid to a face and form unendowed with the desired beauty. She carried her problem to her maid.
"Hatsu, have you ever seen the Emperor?"
Both of their heads bobbed quickly to the mat.
Hatsu had not. She had, it is true, walked miles through country roads, on a hot, dry day, to reach the nearest town through which the Son of Heaven's cortege had once passed. But, of course, as the royal party approached, Hatsu, like all the peasants who had come to the town on this gala day, had fallen face downward on the earth. It was impossible for her therefore to see the face of the Son of Heaven. However, Hatsu had seen the back of his horse—the modern Emperor rode thus abroad, clear to the view of subjects less humble than Hatsu, who dared to raise their eyes to his supreme magnificence. Sunny sighed. She felt sure that had she been in Hatsu's place, she would at least have peeped through her fingers at the mikado. Rummaging among her treasures in the bamboo chest, Sunny finally discovered what she sought—a picture of the Emperor. This she laid before her on the floor, and for a long, long time she studied the features thoughtfully and anxiously. After a while, she said with a sigh, unconscious of the blasphemy, which caused her maid to turn pale with horror,
"I do not like his eye, and I do not like his nose, and I do not like his mouth. Yet, Hatsusan, it is the wish of Jerry-sama that I should marry this Emperor, and now I must make myself so beautiful that it will not hurt his eye if he deigns to look at me."
Hatsu, at this moment was too overcome with the utter audacity of the scheme to move, and when she did find her voice, she said in a breathless whisper:
"Mistress, the Son of Heaven already has a wife."
"Ah, yes," returned Sunny, with somewhat of the careless manner toward sacred things acquired from her friends, "but perhaps he may desire another one. Come, Hatsusan. Work very hard on my face. Make me look like ancient picture of an Empress of Japan. See, here is a model!" She offered one of her mother's old prints, that revealed a court lady in trailing gown and loosened hair, an uplifted fan half revealing, half disclosing a weirdly lovely face, as she turned to look at a tiny dog frolicking on her train.
It was a long, a painful and arduous process, this work of beautifying Sunny. There was fractious hair to be darkened and smoothed, and false hair to help out the illusion. There was a small face that had to be almost completely made over, silken robes from the mother's chest to slip over the girlish shoulders, shining nails to be polished and hidden behind gold nail protectors, paint and paste to be thickly applied, and a cape of a thousand colours to be thrown over the voluminous many coloured robes beneath.
The sky was a dazzling blaze of red and gold. Even the deepening shadows were touched with gilt, and the glory of that Japanese sunset cast its reflection upon the book-lined walls of the big living room, where the Americans, lingering over pipe and hook, dreamily and appreciatively watched the marvellous spectacle through the widely opened windows. But their siesta was strangely interrupted, for, like a peacock, a strange vision trailed suddenly into the room and stood with suspended breath, fan half raised, in the manner of a court lady of ancient days, awaiting judgment. They did not know her at first. This strange figure seemed to have stepped out of some old Japanese print, and was as far from being the little Sunny who had come into their lives and added the last touch of magic to their trip in Japan.