So, without further preparation or experience, was the little Lady Yuki,
fresh from her American school, not yet completely readapted to her
native environment, installed as mistress of a great, official mansion.
The servants, of course, were strangers. A few of these bore to Prince
Hagané the relation of "hangers-on," impoverished families of soldiers
and retainers left from feudal days. Others had official connection with
the place, and remained unmolested through various administrations.
For the first twenty-four hours the young wife moved in an atmosphere of
dazed unreality. Her first conscious interest was in the mail. She began
to watch for letters from her mother, or Gwendolen,--perhaps from that
one whom she must forget. The thought of their last interview remained
with her as the cruelest of all her wounds. No letter came. Pierre would
not, in any case, have written, believing that Hagané had given orders
to have all letters pass first under his inspection. The silence of
Iriya and Gwendolen had another cause. Her new and exalted rank
necessitated from Yuki the initial step. She did not know this, and
Hagané, plunged deep already into affairs of state, had not thought to
tell her.
She lived now almost an isolated existence. Only the head butler dared
personally address her. Even he, in requesting orders from "her
Highness," bowed and smiled with a sort of deprecating commiseration, as
though he recognized her bewilderment. Of her husband she saw little.
The longing for her mother and her friend grew poignant. Through the
great high-ceiled rooms she wandered. The face of the great dark Buddha
often loomed above her. From every shadow she shrank, fearing that
Pierre Le Beau might be in hiding. Three miserable days dragged by. On
the fourth, Hagané was present at the breakfast-table. News of a great
victory had come. The Western world was just beginning to realize the
true mettle in the Japanese soul. Hagané read aloud several editorials
from English and American papers, and made comment upon them, as though
his listener were a man, and his equal. He had ordered a foreign meal,
and the coffee and excellent food stimulated the girl. Her husband's
companionship and condescension exhilarated her. It was part of a
brightening future that, even before their meal was over, the butler
should announce, "Madame Onda, mother to her Highness."
Yuki gave a small cry of pleasure. Hagané lowered his paper, and paused
to smile upon his young wife. He did not give a hint that it was through
his direct agency that the visitor had come. "Ah, your eyes brighten at
this news more even than at victory!" he laughed. To the servant he said
briefly, "Conduct Madame Onda to us here."
The servant hesitated, "Your Highness, there is with her also an old
attendant, a dame called Suzumé, who--talks."
"Shall we bid the chatterer enter, Yuki?"
"If your Highness permit," laughed Yuki.
"Admit both," said Hagané, and returned to his editorials.
Yuki rose to welcome her guests. As the door was flung back Iriya
hesitated for a moment on the threshold. Without a glance toward Yuki
she hurried to the Prince, and, prostrating herself, bowed again and
again, with audible, indrawn breaths. Suzumé, at her heels, followed
suit, excelling her mistress in the rapidity of repeated bows, and the
power of audible suction.
"Nay, little mother of my Yuki," said Hagané, reaching down a hand,
"rise now, I pray. Such extreme of deference is not seemly in the mother
of a princess. Kindly be at ease in greeting your daughter, and converse
as freely as if I were not present."
Iriya allowed herself to be persuaded to perch on the very rim of a
leather chair and sip at a cup of coffee, while she and Yuki exchanged
compliments and inquiries as to the health of the members of their
respective families. This is always the first social duty in Japan. It
takes the place of "weather."
No notice whatever was being taken of old Suzumé, who had continued
genuflections and inspiration to the point of vertigo, when Yuki at last
came to her assistance. Nothing would induce the old dame to sit on a
foreign chair. "She had tried them once," she protested. "They felt like
a pile of dead fish on a kitchen bench." Her post, self-assigned, was
the extreme corner of the red and green Axminster carpet. While her
superiors conversed, she let her keen, sunken eyes dart like
dragon-flies from one piece of furniture to the other, from ceiling to
floor, from curtain to framed oil-painting, until the very texture of
these things must have been photographed on her busy retina.
After a few pleasant if perfunctory questions and replies, Prince Hagané
rose, saying that he had work in his private office, and afterward must
leave the house. "I hope you will remain with Yuki just as long as your
domestic duties permit," he had said last of all. Immediately upon his
closing of the door, Iriya began congratulating her daughter upon her
splendid fortune, and retailing congratulatory messages from relatives
and old friends. The little lady's feet, as she sat on the high
dining-room chair, did not quite reach to the floor. The draught on her
bare ankles just above the tabi (digitated socks) sawed like ice. With a
little gesture of entreaty to Yuki, she hurried over to a comfortable
sofa, where she nestled, and drew her feet up under her. Yuki smiled at
the naïveté of it. Already she felt years older than her mother. She
took her place on a chair, drawing forward a tabouret with smoking
outfit, and urged her willing guest to the luxury of a small pipe. A
sense of freedom, of delight in this sweet companionship, swept for the
moment Yuki's hovering responsibilities.
"Okkasan, dear Okkasan (honorable mother), I am so happy to be with you!
But why did you wait so long?" Her voice was rich with tender reproving.
"Three long days! Long as the castle moats when the mud is showing. The
prince is in this house but seldom. I have been lonely, mother."
"Your father forbade me to write or visit you until official request was
made us. Now you are a princess, dear, and far outrank Sir Onda's wife."
Yuki flushed. Her eyes sank in embarrassment. "Oh, I had not heard of
the strange fact. I beg your pardon, my mother. I am ashamed that it is
so."
Iriya laughed. "Do you beg my pardon for being a princess, for making
your father proud and happy, when--when--he was threatened by such
disappointment?"
Now Iriya, too, became embarrassed. She had intended not to refer to
unhappy topics of the past. Yuki was thinking deeply. "It must be
honorably the same cause which keeps my Gwendolen away." A great relief
followed the thought. The fear of coldness, of censure, was gone. She
smiled into the air before her, thinking of the letter she soon should
write.
At first, unnoticed by her companions, old Suzumé had risen from her
corner and was trotting stealthily about the room. She touched now,
softly, each marvellous object within her reach, and talked to herself,
the while, in a queer little sing-song monologue. "Ma-a-a! the
honorable, huge room, and the wonderful things, all belonging to our
Yuki-ko! Foreign carpets with many-colored vegetables painted on them.
Strange, puffy beds, high up on legs, like horses (here she patted a
French sofa). High tables,--Ma-a-a! with little carpets on them, too,
all ravelled at the edges. Big glass wine-cups (here she lifted an
iridescent flower-vase)--merciful Buddha! No wonder the august
foreigners are so often drunk! Gold is all about, on walls and
furniture,--even the pictures have little fences of gold around them! I
see a big singing-box (piano) over in the corner. That alone costs
hundreds and hundreds of yen. How rich our o jo san must be!"
Iriya and Yuki, by this time, had begun to notice the antics and to
smile at the crooning of the old woman. She saw it,--nothing escaped the
arrow of those jetty orbs,--but it pleased her now to pretend
unconsciousness of observation. She placed herself in front of Yuki, as
if the young wife were a large dressed doll, and could not listen.
"Ma-a-a! Our o jo san, last of the Onda race. There she sits, straight
and slim in her foreign chair, just like our Gracious Empress herself
when her photograph is taken! Now she is a princess, but once she was
only a little girl, carried to school on old Suzumé's bent back.
Tee-hee! My back is crooked now as Daruma,--but a princess helped to
crook it!"
"Don't say such things, Suzumé!" cried Yuki, quickly. "They hurt me!"
"Why should it hurt you, Yuki-ko,--I mean, your Highness, when old
Suzumé is only proud?" chuckled the beldame, with almost malicious
enjoyment. "Let me be crooked, by your favor. Let me hump over like the
lobster of long life. A princess curved my back, tee-hee! Ma-a-a! Will
your kind eyes moisten for such a thing? Arà! I have ceased. Behold me
now, your Highness,--straight and slim as a young willow down by the
moat." She threw back her shoulders and swaggered comically.
"That is better. How is it that little Maru did not come to-day?" asked
Yuki, determined, if possible, to change the current of the old soul's
thought. Her effort was strikingly successful. Simultaneously Suzumé's
face and hands fell. "Ma-a-a! I am a fool. Moths have eaten my memory!
Maru crouches yet outside the street gate, waiting for permission to
enter."
"And I, too, forgot. Kwannon, forgive my selfishness," murmured Iriya.
"Oh, poor, poor Maru!" cried the hostess, her face a bright tangle, now,
of smiles and tears, "the cold wind blows down that street. Go quickly,
Suzumé. Fetch her, instantly!"
The spoiled old servant cast a cunning eye to an electric bell set in
its black wood disc. "August Princess," she whined, "deign but to put
your smallest finger upon that white pebble yonder, and at once a fine
man-servant will enter. Maru will be much comforted to receive her
summons from a grand _man_-servant in foreign clothes!"
Iriya's face showed vexation at the old servant's forwardness, but Yuki
laughed and touched the bell. She was beginning to realize, in a sort of
glad wonder, that her heart grew lighter with every smile.
Maru came into the room sidewise. At every few steps her knees
apparently gave way. She did not know, in a foreign house, just when she
was expected to kneel and bow, so kept herself in readiness to drop at
an instant's notice. Her face was round, like a dish. Her beady eyes
snapped and sparkled with excitement. The small button of a nose, blown
on by unfriendly winds, glowed in the centre of her countenance like an
over-ripe cherry. At sight of Yuki, she found her cue and grovelled.
"How is it?" asked Yuki of her mother, when Maru was at last persuaded
to hold her head erect, "that, I not having yet written, you and the
servants came to me?"
"Why, did you not know of it? Prince Hagané sent, last night, a special
messenger."
"No, I had not heard. Prince Hagané is very kind."
At the curious tone Iriya sent a keen look to her daughter. She did not
like the expression gathering on the down-bent face. "Come, my jewel,
you have not shown us half the wonders of your new home. Shall not
Suzumé and Maru be given bliss? We can stay but an hour."
"An hour!" echoed the young wife, in dismay. "That is already half
spent. Oh, mother, one hour?"
"Such are your father's orders. You know we do not disobey him."
Yuki sighed. "I know. Well, let us see all that we can in the short
space. This room is but the dining-room, where, as you have seen, we eat
foreign meals. There is a Japanese wing and smaller dining-room, which I
shall often use when my master is absent. Now let us go into the long
hall, then into the zashiki, or drawing-room." In passing the hall-way
she saw Maru's eyes fasten on the telephone box. It had, indeed, an
unrelated, black look, set so squarely against the flowered wall-paper.
Yuki felt the tug on an inspiration. "Come, mother; I shall not need to
write to my friend. I shall talk to her through this! Like the old
sennin (genii), who whispered to each other from peak to crag of far
mountains, I shall talk clearly to the slope of Azabu!"
Iriya caught her sleeve. "I fear for you to talk in that strange way, my
child. The gods may not like it."
"Ah, mother, in America I have talked for hours and was not injured."
"Our gods were not in America to see," murmured Iriya, and followed with
evident reluctance. Suzumé and Maru came close behind. Yuki boldly
pulled down the receiver and held it to her ear. The servants uttered
short squeaks like mice.
"Moshi, moshi!" called Yuki, giving the Japanese telephone cry.
Maru shuddered. "Is it a deaf devil, that the o jo san speaks so
loudly?"
"A whole nest of devils, Maru San," said Yuki, with mischievous and
impressive gravity. "There are green and red devils like those that the
lightning bolts bring down, and little foreign devils in boots and
beards, and--"
"Oh, let us go! let us go!" cried the little maid, and clutched Suzumé's
sleeve.
"America no K[=o]shikwan," Yuki was replying, in apparent unconcern, to
the devils. Suzumé had realized the situation. "Fool!" she said to the
cringing Maru, giving a scowl and a light cuff on the ear, "the princess
is only telegraphing in talk instead of writing. The house-servants
laugh at you. We shall have no face!"
By this time the imperilled princess was talking rapidly in English. Her
countenance quivered, brightened, changed, as if a person stood before
her. In pause of listening she would nod, smile, listen again, giving
murmured ejaculations.
The verisimilitude proved too much for Maru. In spite of cuffs fiercely
renewed, and a desperate effort to keep her limp body from the floor,
she sank from her mentor's grasp, clutching the thin old legs, and
sobbing, "They are bewitching our Miss Yuki,--I know they are! Foxes are
shut in that black box! She will get full of them, and then they will
all fly out to eat our hearts!"
"They'd have a sop of sour jelly with yours, cuttlefish!" said Suzumé,
kicking in disgust. Finally, in utter exasperation, she seized the
culprit by the ear, sliding her bodily down the hardwood floor, and
depositing her in a moaning heap on the back veranda beneath a
water-cooler.
"Gwendolen, Gwendolen!" Yuki was crying. "I have just now learned, I
think, why you have not come or wrote to me." (Pause.) "Yes, it was just
that thing,--my rank, it is called. Alas, do you remember, Gwendolen,
that poor little sea-maid how she feel when the proud grandmother
beckoned eight large oysters to fasten upon her scales? Well, I have now
the pinch of such oysters. But I will not care so much if only you will
come!" (Pause.) "My mother is with me, and her servants, but they must
go very soon. I will be alone.--Yes, he is to be absent all the day. Oh,
come quickly,--quickly,--I cannot bear some more long waiting." Yuki
wheeled from the telephone. "She will come, mother; my friend will come!
Let us go to the long drawing-room and wait for her. I will send tea and
cakes to comfort the silly Maru. Some other day we shall see all of this
big house. It is very ugly, though costing much money. That is honorably
often the case with foreign things. Oh, mother, I have been so hungry
for you and my golden friend! She will be brought to us in the long
drawing-room. We are in heart and soul, if not in race, true sisters.
How kind she was to me at school! I have written you before. The other
girls would tease me. They asked impertinent questions, and would always
be tormenting me to dance. Gwendolen was the only one to see how I felt.
She protected me, and would not let me dance until my heart began to
sing. She knew that real dancing, like poetry, should come only when
your heart sings,--not just because you are requested. Sometimes in
homesickness I would dance, sometimes in joy of springtime flowers.
Those girls tried, too, to dance,--the funny American girls! But they
could never learn. Not even Gwendolen could learn, though I taught and
taught and taught her!"
Excitement bred of the coming visit caught her up like a leaf. Prattling
on, she moved swiftly into the long room, beckoning now and then for
Iriya to follow. The mother kept at quite a distance, embarrassed by
this lack of restraint in a married daughter. In the centre of the room
the girl paused, and, as if impelled, threw herself into a pose of
wonderful beauty, every bone, every inch of white flesh set, as it were,
into visible expression of a poetic thought. "I did not know that ever
again I should wish to dance like this," Iriya heard her murmur. "Yes, I
am coming back to myself. Even that little soul that fled on the
ship,--it may come back last of all, but it will come."
Half dreamily she passed into a second pose. The transition was music.
Now her long eyes closed into a mere gleaming thread, her lips parted,
and trembled. Almost without motion of her mouth she talked on, in
broken Japanese phrases, uttering them in rhythms, which subtly related
to the gestures of her body. "No, those girls could never dance,--never
dance,--with their honorably stiff shoulders and their limbs like trunks
of young trees. They attempted it with fervor, but they could not
augustly dance. But I will dance again, and my souls will listen. I will
dance the dance of the Sun Goddess and of morning, because my friend is
coming!" She hummed, now, the tune and the words of a famous classic.
Iriya, completely under the spell, sank to the floor in the attitude of
a singer, caught up the rhythm, and sang with her:
"Night is where thou art not,
Oh, my beloved!
Night lies in the stone rolled close against thy door.
Let the sighs of spring,
(My sighing, oh, divine one,)
Let the salt waves' weeping (my salt tears) allure thee!"
The beautiful gestures flowed one into the next, like currents of living
water.
"Lo, she awakens; light with shining fingers frets the dark
rock fissure.
She approaches; see the black rock melt."
"Hark! listen!" cried the dancer, and paused with arms outspread. It was
as if winds stood still, as if a flower-branch, tossed in air, lost
suddenly its power to return. Iriya caught her breath. She too rose.
Jinrikisha wheels were on the gravel. "My hour is gone," said Iriya; "I
know it from the shadows. I will now return home, taking the servants
with me. You remain here, my child, and greet the friend who now
enters."
"Yes, I will remain here, mother, my dear, dear mother, I will greet my
friend," whispered the girl. The glamour of the dance had swept back and
held her. Half in the world of poetry, half in the material present, she
wavered. The dawn of her friend's coming shone through both. Iriya, with
a last, tender look, slipped from the room. Yuki's lip quivered like a
child's as she saw her mother go. But now, down the long hall, came the
tap-tap of high-heeled foreign shoes. A new tremor stirred Yuki's lips,
a little hint of fear hid in her eyes.
Gwendolen paused on the threshold. For a long moment the two stood
transfixed,--gazing, searching, each the face of the other. Yes, a
barrier had grown between them,--the mystery of marriage, the
recollection (on Gwendolen's part) of unspeakable slanders, the ghostly,
intangible stirring of race antagonism, to which they themselves could
not have given name. Yuki began slowly to whiten, but Gwendolen, with a
backward toss of the head like Diana on a hilltop, cried out aloud, "My
sister!" and the two friends, crashing through phantoms, found each
other's arms. They clung close, sobbing and swaying. Whispers started,
but never found conclusion. Names were repeated with every intonation of
deep love. "My friend,--my Gwendolen!" "Yuki! Yuki! Yuki!" A dozen times
they drew back, looked again, and clung closer. Finally they succeeded
in reaching a sofa, and sat down, with hands still intertwined.
"And you, little you, are the mistress of all this great house! You are
to give receptions, and be the chief hostess. I suppose you will
chaperon _me_, you chicken! Isn't it a joke?"
"It do seem joky," admitted Yuki, with another sigh of full content.
"Well, Madame la Princesse, may I give you now my first social
commission? I want a prince of my own,--a Japanese prince. Let him be
poor,--all the better,--but his trademark, I mean his crest, I insist on
having it warranted as the real thing."
"What would then become of poor Mr. Dodge?"
"Mr. Dodge!" echoed the other, with greatest scorn. "You certainly never
had any idea I would look twice at Mr. Dodge! Besides, he is making a
fool of himself over that fat, ogling Carmen Niestra. Ugh! She reminds
me of a huge suet pudding with sweet sauce. I always suspected Dodge of
low sentiments."
"I know not of this Miss Carmen," said Yuki, in a troubled voice. "But I
like Mr. Dodge, always, very, very much; and I am sure he loved
you--distractionately!"
"That just about expresses it!" cried Gwendolen; and little Yuki never
knew why her friend laughed so heartily, while the dark shadow of an
unspoken pain still clouded her bright eyes. "Let's change the subject,"
the American said quickly. "Dad told me to give you lots of love, and to
say that all of us were looking forward to that grand first reception of
yours. Next Thursday, isn't it? No, Friday. We got our cards yesterday."
"You will come and assist me in the preparing, won't you, dear
Gwendolen?"
"I couldn't be kept away!"
"And Mrs. Todd, too. Your kind mother, will she not come?"
Gwendolen averted her face. "The truth is, Yuki, mother takes Pierre's
part. Nothing that dad or I can say has influence. That awful Mrs. Stunt
owns mother now, body and soul; and Mrs. Stunt has no tender feelings to
spare for her own sex."
"I am not surprised at your mother, or even greatly hurt. It is right
that--he--should have friends to sympathize. Say to your mother, please,
that I do not resent."
"I'll say nothing of the kind!" cried Gwendolen, indignantly. "It
would please Mrs. Stunt too much. Oh, they will be waiting to question
me about you. Mrs. Stunt's eyes will glare like those of a hungry
hyena. I shall tell them that you are superbly indifferent. That will
fetch them! Mrs. Stunt, as it is, will be the first to enter your
reception-rooms,--the odious little painted ghoul!"
All brightness had faded from the young faces. Each stared upon troubled
visions. "Since we are on such topics, Yuki," Gwendolen began, "I might
as well tell you and have done with it,--Pierre himself is acting like a
spoiled child, a cad. He wants to make trouble."
"His threat is to harm Prince Hagané, is it not?"
"Yes! But who told you?" She looked sharply at her companion. Yuki
apparently had not heard. Gwendolen went on. "Dad simply laughs at him
for a foolish blusterer. He says a cricket might as well shake its fists
at a grain elevator."
"There is no rumor at all that Pierre may go home to France?"
"Absolutely none. Ronsard is using him as a cat's-paw. Since your
marriage Pierre has been openly announced Second Secretary of the French
Legation. A sinecure, but it gives him entrée to all court
functions,--to official receptions,--to--_your_ reception, Yuki."
"I have thought of this also," said Yuki. "He could not harm my husband
in such an open place."
"No, but with that demon of a Ronsard behind him he could embarrass,
perhaps mortify, both you and Hagané."
Yuki fell silent. Her slim hands clasped and unclasped nervously. Her
eyes were fixed on a spot of carpet near her feet. "Of course it is
certain that so great statesman as Hagané thought of all such dangers
before he wished to marry me," she murmured, as much to herself as her
companion.
"Good gracious, Yuki Onda!" broke in Gwendolen, with startling
abruptness. "What are those fearful scars on your hands? Did they
torture you after all?"
Gwendolen's shocked face and horrified tone expressed more than she
would willingly have admitted.
Yuki's eyes flashed once. She drew her hands within her sleeves. "How
can you say such silly thing? Nipponese do not torture!"
Gwendolen, to hide her emotion (for she did not entirely believe Yuki's
vehement asseveration) sprang up and began walking up and down the room,
near the sofa where Yuki sat, watching her. "What is it that you were
about to warn me of Monsieur Le Beau?" asked the latter, calmly.
"He is weak--silly--sentimental; bleating all over the place about his
blighted hopes,--his ruined life. He makes me ill!" The girl was
thankful to expend on the absent Pierre indignation to which she dared
not ascribe the real source. Those gashes on her friend's small hands
were burned already on her own heart. It did not occur to her that
accident had caused them. In a time of such conflict, they must be,
necessarily, the marks of cruelty and violence. Yuki guessed the pent-up
fount of passion in her friend, for she remarked quite coolly, "I assure
you, Gwendolen, those little scratches were made by me,--myself, on our
garden hedge. I was the stupidity. No one caused but myself. You know I
have never told to you an untruthful thing. As for Monsieur Le Beau, he
has all reasons for saying that I have ruined his life."
"Ruined his grandmother!" cried the other. "There you are, looking meek
again. No wonder that all men are bullies when we turn coward at the
first frown. I thank Heaven it was no man, however, that made those
scars on you. If it had been--" She stopped short, looking so fierce
that Yuki had to smile at her. "Well, Amazon?" she asked.
"Oh, I hate all men!--young ones in particular. Pierre thinks his heart
is bleeding, but, after all, it is chiefly his precious vanity. He don't
like being jilted! Subtract vanity from the average man and you don't
leave much beside the fillings of his front teeth. They are all alike! I
know them!" She flung herself to the sofa and clasped her arms once more
tightly around her friend. The outburst had relieved her; but a new
sadness came. Yuki was still very pale. A little pathetic drooping had
begun to show at the corners of her lips. Gwendolen was by nature the
antagonist of resignation. She hated the dawning look of it on Yuki's
face. "Yuki, Yuki, shall we ever be happy again as we were at school?
Yet we were restless there. All our thoughts flew westward, far, far
westward, and over that broad ocean, to your Japan. We could never be
really happy, we thought, until we had reached, together, this country
of your birth. Oh, it is beautiful, as you told me! Each day its beauty
deepens. I know now what you meant by yama-buki fountains all of
gold,--and the wide, still yellow lakes of 'na.' In our Legation garden
the cherry-trees are crusted over with tiny pointed rubies, which
soon--yes, very soon--must turn to flowers. All that I see is beautiful,
and yet, Yuki, think in how short a time life has brought us both deep
sorrow!" She drew a sigh, the long, luxurious, despairing sigh of
untried youth. Yuki, having griefs more real, echoed it in softer
cadence.
"Yes, the cherry-buds will open, and the fountain of your yama-buki
toss, no matter what we are feeling! Is it not kind to be so? I have
heard that your Legation garden is not very--harmonious. Will there be
many bright spring flowers in it?"
"The garden is a blot, but it is a big blot, and things grow there,
thank Heaven! Haven't you ever been to the American Legation at all?
Yuki, I have an idea!"
"No," Yuki had answered. At the new sparkle of excitement in the fair
face she unconsciously sat more erect.
"I have an idea!" Gwendolen repeated. "You are now your own mistress.
Why can't you drive home with me, and give mother a surprise? Nothing
would soften her like that,--the Princess Hagané to call in person!"
"Yes, yes, I will do that thing!" cried Yuki, taking fire at once. "How
clever you are, Gwendolen! I would sit here mourning for the month and
not have such bright idea. I tell you, listen! We will send your
jinrikisha off, then you stays to luncheon with me, and after luncheon
we takes the pumpkin and some rats and turn them into a great coach with
horses, and drive off in splendor, like two little Cinderellas, to your
mother's house! Oh, what jolliness! let us go upstairs and remove your
hat!"
"What!" cried the other, in mock astonishment, "you have an upstairs,
and beds for me to fling my wraps upon, and a brush and comb, perhaps,
for me to rearrange my locks!"
"Come see!" challenged Yuki. They ran off together, Yuki darting up the
steps, Gwendolen catching at her flying heels, both laughing, giggling,
uttering short shrieks. "Well," panted the American, sitting prone upon
the top step, "it seems that life is going to be worth living after
all!"