I tore the paper into shreds.
“What a sullen lady! What did Otto San write? Marriage proposal, I reckon!” my uncle intruded.
“Papa threatened me with a list of suitors. He cried, ‘Chance, chance!’ like the gate-man of an ennichi show. Pray grant me for once in my life, Uncle, to say: ‘The marriage lottery go to the dogs!’ How many Jap girls kill themselves from the burden of such a glued union, do you suppose?”
“Then, ‘free marriage’?”
“Of course!”
“It’s very beautiful, Miss Morning Glory.”
“Why not?”
“You are Japanese, aren’t you?”
“Did you ever think I was a Meriken jin?”
“Well, then, how did you come to know young men in a country where familiarity with one is regarded as a crime for a girl?”