Page:A Daughter of the Samurai.pdf/331

Rh kitchen, some round, some square. some plain, and some elaborately dyed in patterns—for cushions were our chairs, and every house had to have a supply always on hand.

“This holds my ‘treasure dresses,’&thinsp;” said Sister, waving her hand toward a low chest of drawers. “The clothes that I wear I keep downstairs within easy reach; but some of these have been in the family for more than two hundred years.”

She took out an elaborately embroidered trained garment with a scarlet lining and heavily padded hem—a dress of ceremony, worn, even in ancient times, only on state occasions. It looked fresh and almost new, for Japanese women are careful housekeepers, and probably this gown had been shaken out and examined on every airing-day since it was first used by the ancestor of long ago.

“It looks just like the splendid dresses we saw in that play at the Tokyo theatre, doesn’t it?” said Hanano.

And indeed it did. For only on the stage were these gorgeous costumes to be seen in modern life.

The next drawer held Sister’s wedding dresses—seven of them. There was the soft, white linen, emblem of death to her own home, the scarlet silk, emblem of birth into her husband’s family, and the five other elaborately embroidered gowns bearing her husband’s crest and the marriage emblems of pine, bamboo, and plum.

“Here is the wedding cap you asked to see,” said Sister, presently, unfolding something that looked like a great satiny mushroom. It was of exquisite pressed silk floss and made to fit rather close over the head and shoulders. It looked like a thick, shining veil.

“Oh, isn’t it pretty?” cried Chiyo, delighted. “Put it on, Hanano, and let’s see how you look!”