Page:Eminent Authors of Contemporary Japan.pdf/100

84 night. But there was no little voice calling Mitsu-ko then. It was always “Kinnosuke-san, Kinnosuke-san!” instead.

“Sode-ko-san, why don’t you play with me now? HsveHave [sic] you forgotten me?”

Mitsu-ko’s voice was heard calling from the window of a neighbouring upstairs window. Her precocious girlish voice sounded clear in the early spring air.

Sode-ko had been busy preparing for an entrance examination of a certain girls’ school, and had returned home late from class. As she approached the house, she heard the shrill voice of Mitsu-ko, but passed on without paying any heed to her call. She entered her home and found Ohatsu sewing and playing with Kinnosuke near the paper shutters of the sitting-room.

That afternoon, Sode-ko provoked Kinnosuke, and for the rest of the day he never left Ohatsu’s side.

“Char-chan!”

“Yes, Kinnosuke-san.”

Thus these two exchanged words of love with one another in the presence of Sode-ko, and each time that the baby called to her, she smiled lovingly upon it.

“Char-chan!”

“Yes, Kinnosuke-san.”

“Char-chan!”

“Yes, Kinnosuke-san.”

Ohatsu’s voice became so loud that Sode-ko’s father appeared at the door with a smiling face.

“What a noise you are both making! From my room it sounds as if you were both singing a duet!”