Iriya caught her sleeve. "I fear for you to talk in that strange way, my child. The gods may not like it."
"Ah, mother, in America I have talked for hours and was not injured."
"Our gods were not in America to see," murmured Iriya, and followed with evident reluctance. Suzumè and Maru came close behind. Yuki boldly pulled down the receiver and held it to her ear. The servants uttered short squeaks like mice.
"Moshi, moshi!" called Yuki, giving the Japanese telephone cry.
Maru shuddered. "Is it a deaf devil, that the o jo san speaks so loudly?"
"A whole nest of devils, Maru San," said Yuki, with mischievous and impressive gravity. "There are green and red devils like those that the lightning bolts bring down, and little foreign devils in boots and beards, and—"
"Oh, let us go! let us go!" cried the little maid, and clutched Suzumè's sleeve.
"America no Kōshikwan," Yuki was replying, in apparent unconcern, to the devils. Suzumè had realized the situation. "Fool!" she said to the cringing Maru, giving a scowl and a light cuff on the ear, "the princess is only telegraphing in talk instead of writing. The house-servants laugh at you. We shall have no face!"
By this time the imperilled princess was talking rapidly in English. Her countenance quivered, brightened, changed, as if a person stood before her. In pause of listening she would nod, smile, listen again, giving murmured ejaculations.
The verisimilitude proved too much for Maru. In spite of cuffs fiercely renewed, and a desperate effort to keep her limp body from the floor, she sank from her mentor's grasp, clutching the thin old legs, and sobbing, "They are bewitching our Miss Yuki,—I know they are! Foxes are shut in that black box! She will get full of them, and then they will all fly out to eat our hearts!"