Tetsujo considered. "I could not refuse you a continuance of friendship, my child, though I confess it will irk me greatly to see those strange creatures on my mats. After the first few days of your home-coming,—in a week, perhaps,—you can speak again of this desire."
Yuki's heart sank. A week,—and she had promised to see them to-morrow, perhaps this afternoon! She opened her lips to remonstrate, and then thought better of it. If he felt it a concession to admit Gwendolen, daughter of the new American minister, what would he say to Pierre? Deliberately she fought down the rising host of apprehensions. "No," she whispered, "I shall not dwell upon it. I must not spoil my home-coming with uncertain fears. I shall try to be untroubled until I can tell my father all."
Well along the top of the hill, Onda re-entered his kuruma, and with the word "hidari" (left), started the little string of vehicles down a path that ran in wavering lines between hedges of various growths. Many were of dwarf bamboo or sa-sa, other of a higher bamboo, springing from resilient stems twenty feet in air. A few were of the small-leafed dōdan, a bush which turns to wet vermilion with the frost. Several were of intertwisted thorn, a cruel and relentless guardian. One showed a flat green wall like that of a three-story city house jutting upon a pavement; but the masonry was all of growth, rafters of thick stems, and facing of the close-clipped evergreen mochi-tree. The small tiled gate jutting from the centre of the lower edge seemed the entrance of a cave. Doubtless behind this imposing and misleading front nestled an unpretentious cot, a well-sweep, a small vegetable and flower garden, and a handful of old trees.
Onda's gate, some hundreds of yards further to the north, emerged in wooden simplicity from a sa-sa hedge. Along the street the bamboo only showed. Within it ran a line of well-trained thorn. This fence was characteristic of the race which had planned it; Onda's father and grandfather, and many generations before, had owned this spot of ground in Yedo.
Tetsujo, although the first to arrive, remained in his kuruma, while Iriya and Yuki made haste to descend. The former went at once to the gate, pulling aside a thin wooden panel. A little gate-bell jangled, and at the musical summons wooden-shod feet were heard, running down the pathway from the house. Old Suzumè, shrivelled, yellow, her black eyes darting excitement everywhere, fell on her knees in the gateway. She began immediately to mutter a jumble of ceremonious phrases, in the pauses drawing her breath with ferocious energy. Behind her showed a moon-faced maiden, who stared first, as if bewildered, and then suddenly fell to the earth beside Suzumè.
"That is sufficient," said Tetsujo, now descending and pushing between them as he entered the gate. "Here, Suzumè, take my purse, and let these good rascals rob us as little as possible. Go within, Maru, and prepare to remove the foreign shoes from the feet of your young mistress."
Maru, quaking like a jelly, as she always did when addressed directly by the "august master," obeyed instantly, and knelt at the stone house-step to receive the shoes. Suzumè unwillingly remained at the gate to haggle with the three jinrikisha men.
When the shoes were reverently drawn off, dusted on Maru's blue striped apron, and set side by side on the stone step, the little handmaid disappeared around the corner of the house. A moment later was heard the scurrying of soft stockinged feet within.
Yuki stretched a hand toward the closed shoji.
"No, dear, wait an instant," said Iriya, hurriedly interposing. "Let Maru San open the shoji. She has been rehearsing this for a year."