“Oh, yes,” he answered; “if one is patient by and by the cub will come out. There is a better place. In the corner of the yard by the plum tree there is a big bamboo post in the angle of the fence. To-night, after dark, I will make a cap for it, and in the hollow beneath shall be our letter box.”
“Yes,” she said, “that is best.”
Satisfied of his skill and ingenuity she gave him her prettiest bow and a radiant smile, and moved down the path toward Timber Street. He watched until the far turn shut out from his view the dainty figure in its silver-gray kimono and iris-violet obi, and then thoughtfully took his own way homeward.
It was in the time of “Little Heat” when Soichi fitted the cap to the post. So cleverly he did his work that no one could tell, except by the closest examination, that there was a seam in the bamboo. On the inside he made a deep groove in the post and fastened a tongue to the cap so that it should fit tight always in the same place and never betray what had been done. Often, after that, he would watch his chance and when no one was in sight slip up to the post and stealthily lift the cap to take out or put in a letter.
The days passed swiftly, in spite of his inability to see O-Mitsu, for the work at the bank was new and hard, and as the business prospered there was much for him to do. So Handon and Donkatu (half Sunday and Sunday), as the country people still call them, came around more quickly than he had thought, and nearly always they had contrived to arrange a meeting. Oftenest it was at their favorite big rock back of the pines, where there was seldom a straggling sight-seer to interrupt them. But sometimes, on holidays and festivals, it would be at the big Buddhist temple; and that they liked less, for the crowd interfered, and it was difficult to find a secluded place or to have more than a few words together without observation.
The weeks ran on into months, and the period of the “Cold Dew” came all too quickly, with its short afternoons and early descending sun, that cut down their brief hour together and sent them home to write more letters. For the conversation of lovers is as never-ending in the Mikado’s realm as in the less fettered courtships of happier lands, and there was always so very much between them that had to be said and answered.
And now a new, dread subject was looming up. All over the land traveled the same sinister whisper, and men said the Dragon was rousing himself, and talked of the terrible rustling of his great scales. The winds of war were beginning to blow lightly from the north, and far and near the people waited anxiously to see if they could not be diverted. As time went on, and stronger and stronger came the hostile currents, more and more soberly Soichi and O-Mitsu discussed the darkening future. Much it meant to them, for Soichi would be a soldier. His last birthday had brought him to the age for conscription service, and although his university course would give him some exemption, he was not one to claim it, if the Emperor were engaged in deadly strife; nor indeed would O-Mitsu have him. As autumn dipped into winter the wrath of the people toward their great antagonist grew and deepened, and anxiety lest there should be war gave place to desire for it.
They were sitting again by their great rock one late fall afternoon when the grass was brown and dead, and through the bare branches that waved above the housetops the wind blew bleak and cold from off a sullen sea. They had talked of war and what it might bring to them. Each felt it would be the end of all their dreams, for a soldier’s duty is to die for the Emperor, and Soichi would not come back when once he had been called to the front.