She tried to speak, and her hand reached out flutteringly toward her husband—a charming, helpless little gesture that warmed him to the soul. He inclosed the little reaching hand, and thus, hand in hand, they faced the enraged lady.
“Your manners, my good girl, are in keeping with the geisha-house. Is it the fashion there to ignore the voice of authority?”
The bride’s large, dark eyes had widened in innocent surprise. Only partially she seemed to comprehend the older woman’s attitude. She had been but a day in the house of the parents-in-law. No one as yet had taught her, the cherished, petted, adored star of the House of Slender Pines, that the position of a daughter-in-law is often as lowly as that of a servant. Not even by Matsuda had she ever been thus offensively addressed. She said, stammeringly:
“I—I—have not heard the voice of which you speak, august lady.”
A cruel smile curled the lips of her mother-in-law.
“Then it is time, my girl, that you kept your ears wide open.”
She sat down upon her heels abruptly by the hibachi.
“Tea is desirable for the honorable insides. Water for my feet, which are tired!”
The girl’s eyes turned inquiringly toward her husband. He had grown darkly red. For a moment he seemed about to speak protestingly to his mother; then in a whisper he murmured to his bride:
“It is your—duty!”