Page:Eminent Authors of Contemporary Japan, volume 2.pdf/132

112 noticed that at the top of the pagoda-tower, the “kurin” (a decoration of spiral rings attached to the top of the tower of a pagadapagoda [sic]) was glittering and shining under the still weak rays of the early morning sun. He thought perhaps it might be frost.

The Naigu stood on the balcony of the temple, the shutters of which had already been opened, and as his eyes rested on the beauty of the morning and all that he saw before him, he breathed deeply with contentment.

But somehow while he stood there, the old feeling of worry came to him again, and after some hesitation he put up one of his hand to feel the condition of his nose. What he felt was not the short nose of yesterday, but he became aware that his old nose, with its five to six inches of length, hung again from above his upper lip to beneath his jaw. The Naigu suddenly realised that his nose must have grown again to its former length during the previous night. At once a strange feeling of happiness came into his heart, the very same feeling he had experienced when he first found that his nose had been successfully shortened.

“Surely no one will ever laugh at me now that my nose has grown long again,” murmured the Naigu to himself as his long nose hung in the gray of an autumn dawn.