One Sunday morning Sunny came in from a little walk as far as the park, with Itchy. In spite of an unexpectedly hard shower that had fallen soon after she had left, she returned smiling and perfectly dry; excited and delighted moreover over the fortune that had befallen her.
"Jerry!" she cried as soon as she entered, "I are git jost to those corner, when down him come those rain. So much blow! Futen (the wind god) get very angery and blow me quick up street, but the rain fall down jos' lig' cloud are burst. Streets flow lig' grade river. Me? I are run quick and come up on steps of house, and there are five, ten other people also stand on those step and keep him dry. One gentleman he got beeg umberella. I feel sure that umberella it keep me dry. So I smile on those mans——"
"You what?"
"I make a smile on him. Like these——" Sunny illustrated innocently.
"Don't you know better than to smile at any man on the street?"
Sunny was taken aback. The Japanese are a smiling nation, and the interchange of smiles among the sexes is not considered reprehensible; certainly not in the class from which Sunny had come.
"Smile are not bad. He are kind thing, Jerry. It make people feel happy, and it do lots good on those worl'. When I smile on thad gentlemen, he are smile ride bag on me ad once, and he take me by those arm, and say he bring me home all nize and dry. And, Jerry, he say, he thing I am too nize piece—er—brick-brack—" bric-a-brac was a new word for Sunny, but Jerry recognised what she was trying to say—"to git wet. So he give me all those umberella. He bring me ride up ad these door, and he say he come see me very soon now as he lig' make sure I got good healt'. He are a very kind gentleman, Jerry. Here are his card."
Jerry took the card, glared at it, and began panically walking up and down the apartment, raging and roaring like an "angery tiger," as Sunny eloquently described him to herself, and then flung around on her and read her such a scorching lecture that the girl turned pale with fright, and, as usual, the man was obliged to swallow his steam before it was all exploded.
In parenthesis, it may be here added, that the orders given by Jerry to that black boy at the telephone desk, embraced such a diabolical description of the injury that was destined to befall him should the personage in question ever step his foot across Jerry's threshold, that Sambo, his eyes rolling, never failed to assure the caller, who came very persistently thereafter, that "Dat young lady she am move away, sah. Yes, sah, she am left this department."
It will be seen, therefore, that Sunny, a stranger in a strange land, shut in alone in a studio, religiously following the instructions of Jerry to refrain from making acquaintances with anyone about her, was in a truly sad state. She started to houseclean, but stopped midway in panic, recalling the Japanese superstition that to clean or sweep a house when one of the family is absent is to precipitate bad fortune upon the house. So she got down all of Jerry's clothes and piously pressed and sponged them, as she had seen Hatton do, being very careful this time to avoid her first mistake in ironing. So earnestly had she applied herself to ironing the crease in the front of one of Jerry's trousers that first time that a most disastrous accident was the result. Jerry, wearing the pressed trousers especially to please her, found himself on the street the cynosure of all eyes as he manfully strode along with a complete split down the front of one of the legs, which the too ardent iron of Sunny had scorched. Having brushed and cleaned all of Jerry's clothes on this day, she prepared her solitary lunch; but this she could not eat. Thoughts of Jerry sharing with her the accustomed meals was too much for the imaginative Sunny, and pushing the rice away from her, she said: