Moonlight drank in avidly the burning words of love in the poem. Her eyes were shining and brilliant, her cheeks and lips as red as the poppies in her hair, when Matsuda thrust back the sliding screens and entered the chamber. He said nothing to the smiling geisha, but contented himself with scrutinizing her in a calculating manner, as though he summarized her exact value. Then, with a jerk or nod apparently of satisfaction, he left the room, and the girl was enabled to reread the beloved epistle.
A few moments later the screens which Matsuda had carefully closed behind him were cautiously parted a space, and the thin, impish, pert, and precocious face of a little girl of thirteen was thrust in. She made motions with her lips to the Spider, who laughed and nodded her head.
Omi—for it was she—slipped into the room. She was an odd-looking little creature, her body as thin as her wise little face, above which her hair was piled in elaborate imitation of the coiffure of her mistress and preceptress. She fell to work at once, solicitously arranging the dress and hair of the Spider and complaining bitterly that the maids had neglected, shamefully, her beloved mistress’s toilet.
“Although it is not the proper work for an apprentice-geisha,” she rattled along, “yet I myself will serve your honorable body, rather than permit it to suffer from such pernicious neglect.”
She smoothed the little hands of her mistress, manicured and perfumed them, talking volubly all the time upon every subject save the one the Spider was waiting to hear about. At last, unable to bear it longer, Moonlight broke in abruptly:
“How you chatter of insignificant matters! You tease me, Omi. I shall have to chastise you. Tell me in a breath about the matter.”
Omi grinned impishly, but at the reproachful look of her mistress her natural impulse to torment even the one she loved best in the world gave way. She began in a gasp, as though she had just come hastily into the room.
“Oh, oh, you would never, never believe it in the world. Nor could I, indeed, had I not seen it with my own insignificant eyes.”
“Yes, yes, speak quickly!” urged the Spider, eagerly hanging upon the words of the apprentice.
Omi drew in and expelled her breath in long, sibilant hisses after the manner of the most exalted of aristocrats.