Page:Tayama Katai and His Novel Entitled Futon (Reece).pdf/307

 It was a rather chilly winter day. The rickshaws set out from Yashiki-Chō in Ushigome in the following order: In the first was the old man, in the next was Yoshiko, and in the last was Tokio. Tokio's wife and their maid were sorry to see them go and stood at the gate watching the procession slowly fade from view. Behind them stood a neighbor's wife wondering what had caused this sudden departure. Further behind at the corner of a side street stood a man wearing a brown hat. Yoshiko looked back at this man two or three times.

While the rickshaws were proceeding from the street of Kōjimachi to Hibiya, Tokio thought of the girl students of the present day. Yoshiko, who rode in the rickshaw just in front of his, was wearing a "Hill-203" hairdo with a white ribbon and had a slightly stooped figure; there must be many girl students in this same type of outfit and similar situations who are taken back home by their fathers. Even Yoshiko with her strong will had fallen to this fate. No wonder educators talked at great length about the problems of women. Tokio imagined the pains the old man must be feeling, and Yoshiko's tears over her desolated life. Among the passers-by some looked knowingly at the girl student, beautiful as a flower, going along under the watch of her father and a middle-aged man, with a full load of luggage.

After reaching the inn at Kyōbashi, the old man collected his luggage, and paid the bill. This was the same inn that Yoshiko and her father had stayed at three years ago when they first came