She was dressed in tights, without the customary cape above her, and her graceful, slender limbs were those of extreme youth, supple as elastic from training and ancestry, the lithe, pliable young body of the born trapese performer and dancer. She tossed her parasol to her shoulder, threw up her delicate little pointed chin and laughed across at that sea of faces, throwing right and left her kisses; but the Americans, close to the rope, were observing a phenomenon, for even as her charming little teeth gleamed out in that so captivating smile, a dewdrop appeared to glisten on the child's shining face. Even as she laughed and postured to the music that burst out, there a-tiptoe on the tightrope, the dewdrop fell down her face and disappeared into the sawdust.
Like a flower on the end of a long slender stalk, tossing in the wind, her lovely little head swayed from side to side. Her small, speaking hands, the wrists of which were lovelier than those celebrated by the Japanese poet who for fifteen years had penned his one-line poems to her mother, followed the rhythm of the music, and every part of that delicate young body seemed to sensitively stir and move to the pantomime dance of the tightrope.
In triumph, Hirata heard the loud "Hee-i-i-!" and the sharp indrawing and expulsions of breaths. Scrambling across the room, puffing and expressing his satisfaction, came the Lord of Negato, drunk with sake and amorous for the child upon the rope. He pushed his way past the besieging tea house maidens, who proffered him sweets and tea and sake. His hands went deep into his sleeves, and drew forth a shining bauble. With ingratiating cries to attract her attention, he flung the jewel to the girl upon the rope. Returning his smile, she whirled her fan wide open, caught the gift upon it, and, laughing, tossed it into the air. Juggling and playing with the pretty toy, she kept it twirling in a circle above her, caught it again on her fan, and dropped it down onto the sawdust beneath. Then, like a naughty child, pleased over some trick, she danced back and forth along the rope, as it swung wide with her.
A grunt of anger came from Hirata, who approached near enough for her to see and be intimidated by him, but she kept her gaze well above his head, feigning neither to see him, nor the still pressing Negato. He was calling up to her now, clucking as one might at a dog, and when at last her glance swept his, he threw at her a handful of coin. This also she caught neatly on her opened fan, and then, acting upon a sudden impetuous and impish impulse, she threw right in the face of her besieging admirer. Jumping from the rope to the ground, she smiled and bowed right and left, kissed her hands to her audience, and vanished into the teahouse.
With an imprecation, Hirata followed her into the house. The little maiden, holding the tray, and pausing to solicit the patronage of the Americans, had watched the girl's exit with troubled eyes, and now she said in English:
"Now Hirata will beat her."
"What do you mean?" demanded the young man, who had rejected the proffered cup, and was staring at her with such angry eyes that Spring Morning dropped her own, and bobbed her knees in apology for possible offence.
"What do you mean?" repeated Jerry Hammond, determined upon securing an answer, while his friends crowded about interested also in the reply.
Half shielding her face with her fan, the girl replied in a low voice:
"Always the master beats the apprentice who do wrong. When her mother live, he do not touch her child, but now Madame Many Smiles is dead, and Hirata is very angry. He will surely put the lash to-night upon her."