“Oh, yes, they will any time, Danna-sama, if you just ask them.”
“There is only one hotel there; isn’t that so?”
“Yes, Danna-sama, ask for Shiota and anybody will tell you. Squire Shiota is a rich man of the village and one doesn’t know to call the place which, a hot-spring resort or the old gentleman’s pleasure retreat.”
“Is that so? Guest or no guest makes no difference to him then?”
“Danna-sama is going there for the first time?”
“No, not quite. I was there once long ago.”
There came a temporary lull in our conversation, here, as if by mutual agreement. In the silence that followed, I once more took out my sketch book and began to make a picture of the rooster and his mate, when the jingling of bells caught my ear, the sound making a music of its own in my head. I felt as if I were listening, in a dream, to a mortar-and-pestle rhythm coming from a neighbour’s. I stopped sketching and wrote down instead:
“Harukazeya Inen-ga mimini[(7)]
Umano Suzu.”[(n)]
Coming up the mountain, I passed five or six pack horses and found them all wearing aprons between their fore and hind legs, with bells jingling about their necks. I could not help imagining I was encountering in spirit ghosts long past. Presently there rose above the jingling of bells a quaintly long drawn note of mago-uta[(8)], floating dreamily in the peaceful Spring air of the mountain, and gradually coming upward. This made my rustic but gentle hostess say, as if speaking to herself: “Somebody is coming again.”