"Foolish flowers," she cried, "you do not know our tongue," and she flung them in the fountain basin and set the bright fish scurrying.
And still the girls, the tired-looking, laughing little girls, would cry, "Okimi San got sooeetart! Okimi San got sooeetart!" And still Okimi San went on asking the trees and the flowers and the birds, "What is sooeetart? What is this 'love'?" And they never could understand and answer.
Even Buddh would not tell her, even black, ugly, good little Buddh, who sat cross-legged above the pyramid of dough-cakes on the dresser and protected Okimi. Buddh would not tell her, though she asked him time and time again, with her head on the floor at his feet, as humbly as could be.
So one night when the man they called Sweetheart came, Okimi asked him. He looked blank at first, and she was afraid he was not going to tell her. Then suddenly he gathered her up in his arms, and kissed her on her laughing eyes and pouting lips and little, dimpled chin. "That is love," said he.
Now Okimi had long been practising that honorably foolish and disgusting foreign habit, the kiss. She tried hard, for Mama San, the oracle, said men like girls who know how to kiss. Generally she shut her eyes very tight and screwed up her lips and held her breath. But this time, when Sooeetart said, "This is love," and his lips touched hers, she seemed to have no breath at all, and her eyes stayed open and looked right into his, and—Okimi wriggled out of Sweetheart's arms and ran away as fast as she could with her funny little toed-in steps.
And all the girls together couldn't pull her back. But next morning she gave the juiciest orange to dear, ugly little Buddh who sat cross-legged in the corner and protected her.
She called Sweetheart "Jiji" after that. Jiji means old man, but if you know how to say it just right, it can mean dearest, littlest, biggest, belovedest old man. Okimi said it that way.
Jiji made a most delightful playmate, after Okimi had learned not to be afraid of him. He was so big; when he knelt on a cushion, one of his feet went under the bed, and she had to move a chair to make room for the other. And he was so strong, and insisted on carrying her all about the house in a sort of triumphal procession, whereat the monkeys and parrots chattered and shrieked in amazement, while Okimi kicked him in the ribs and cried "Gid ap" in Japanese, and swore at him innocently in Tagalo, the way she had heard the native coachman talk to his horses. Such romps as they used to have.
But she liked the quiet hours best, when they were alone together, and the samisen waked the echoes of a thousand sorrows. It was sweet to hear the echoes of the sorrows, and then look into Jiji's eyes. And then he had to see if anything had changed since his last visit, and they would make an important tour of inspection, hand in hand. There was the little pot of iris which she was trying so hard to make live in this strange land. And the wrinkled old dwarf of a pine-tree, not much taller than Jiji's longest finger. And there was Buddh, who sat behind the little bowl of blazing oil and protected Okimi. Often, after Jiji was asleep, she would creep out very softly to kneel and say, "Dear Buddh, mighty Buddh, now we know what love is. We thank thee for telling us." And ugly little Buddh, sitting there cross-legged in the tiny, flickering spot of light, smiled back at her most knowingly.
All the girls liked Jiji. He was always making them laugh, and laughter is a pleasant thing. Somehow the food wouldn't stay on his chop-sticks, and so one or two of them must come to his relief. They would pick out the snowiest grains of rice for him, and the juiciest bits of fish and seaweed, and the fattest of the little green plums. Sometimes they would get to racing with each other, and pop things into Jiji's mouth till he could only hold up his hands and shake his head in mournful protest. Then, when he got his breath, he was as likely to say "Doyo mashi tashi" as anything.