Page:Eminent Authors of Contemporary Japan.pdf/152

136 rate!” was his sharp reply.

“If you want to sit up, my dear, you must put on your overcoat…”

But he interrupted her by saying, “Bring them quickly, I say!” Though he did not speak very loudly, his voice sounded irritated. His wife kept quite calm, and after taking her husband’s overcoat from the cupboard, she put it carefully over his shoulders from behind as he sat upright on his bed. Yoshisaburo snatched at the collar of his overcoat, pulled it off his shoulders again, and threw it roughly off the bed.

His wife remained silent, and then opening a small sliding-door, she disappeared. She soon returned from the shop with the strop and the razor. Finding no proper place to hang the strop, she drove a small nail into the wooden pillar by his bed.

Barber Yoshisaburo, even when in good health, was never quite satisfied with his work after sharpening a razor, and now that he was irritated, and with his hands trembling with fever, he was less successful.

Seeing her poor husband’s bad humour, the gentle wife said, “Hadn’t you better make Kane-ko do that for you, dear?” As he did not answer her, she repeated the question several times, but still she got no reply. He, however, began to feel very weak, and after working quietly with the razor for some fifteen minutes, he sank down on his bed quite exhausted. After that he soon fell asleep.