Page:Tales from old Japanese dramas (1915).djvu/174

120 boy up among the children of the coarse peasants until he was ten years old, when he was sent to the shop before mentioned with a view to his learning good manners and refined ways.

The shop was kept by a middle-aged widow called O-Katsu, who had many clerks and servants besides Hisamatsu in her employment. Her only daughter and heiress, O-Somé, had been brought up tenderly, and in great luxury. She was, at that time, seventeen years old, and generally considered throughout the city to be peerlessly beautiful. A mutual attachment sprang up between her and Hisamatsu, and they secretly exchanged vows of eternal fidelity.

Unfortunately for the devoted lovers, an obstacle arose in their way. There was a young millionaire named Yamagaya Sashirō living in the same city, and he was passionately enamoured of O-Somé. One day he impetuously asked O-Somé's mother for her daughter's hand in marriage. The mother disliked him, and had a certain amount of sympathy for her daughter's affection for Hisamatsu. She therefore was unwilling to accept his proposal. But she owed Sashirō's father thousands of ryō, so she dared