Page:Eminent Authors of Contemporary Japan.pdf/103

Rh school.

When the warm spring sun of March was shining through the shutters of the sitting-room, her father came to see her, and enquired anxiously from Ohatsu about his daughter’s condition.

“She is a little …”

She replied vaguely to the question put to her. Sode-ko was silent, for staying in bed made her unhappy, and she was also rather restless. Her father was very anxious about her, and visited her room many times that day. Ohatsu, seeing his anxiety, was unable to conceal the child’s real condition any longer.

“Sir, Sode-ko-san’s illness is nothing to be anxious about.”

On hearing this, the father left the room in doubt. He had always been in the habit of acting as mother to his child, looking after her clothes, and attending to her with the utmost care, but somehow today he felt that he no longer possessed the confidence of his young daughter. He felt that he was only the poor male parent, who could not ask anything further from Ohatsu.

“What is the time now, by the way?” he remarked as he was passing out of the door, and glancing at the clock, he saw that it was ten o’clock.

“Her brothers will be back at noon,” he went on, “Ohatsu, if the children enquire what is the matter with Sode-ko, tell them that as she had a headache I bade her remain home from school.”

The father pondered over the questions that her