Page:Madame Butterfly; Purple eyes; A gentleman of Japan and a lady; Kito; Glory (1904).djvu/21

 why he had gone to all that trouble in Japan!

"To keep out those who are out, and in those who are in," he replied, with an amorous threat in her direction.

She was greatly pleased with it all, though, and went about jingling her new keys and her new authority like toys, she had only one small maid to command, until she learned that among others to be excluded were her own relatives.

There had been what her husband called an appalling horde of these at the wedding (they had come with lanterns and banners and disturbing evidences of good will), and he asked her, when she questioned him, whether she did not think they would be a trifle wearisome.

"You thing so?" she asked in turn.

"Emphatically," said her husband.

She grew pale; she had not expected quite such an answer. A Japanese would have said no, but would have left an interrogation in one's mind.

He laughed consolingly.

"Well, Ane-San" (which meant only "elder sister": there are no terms of endearment in the Japanese language), "you