"STILL A CHILD."
The next day Numè seemed strangely loath to return home. For eight long
years the girl had thought almost constantly of Orito and their marriage
which had always seemed so far away. Now that he had come home, and the
marriage seemed but a matter of a few weeks, she was seized with a
sudden fear and dread of she knew not what. Long after she had finished
breakfast she still lingered with the Davises, and though once or twice
she had gone restlessly to the door and looked out across the fields
toward where her own home was, she seemed in no hurry to leave. Finally
Mrs. Davis had spoken to her, and asked if she did not think they would
be expecting her. Numè clung to the American lady's hands with a sudden
terror.
"Numè is _still_ nerviss," she said.
"Shall I go back with you, dear?"
"No; _let_ me stay with you."
About eleven in the morning, however, Orito walked through the rice
fields and came himself to bring her home. Mrs. Davis saw him alone
first, and after they had exchanged greetings and talked for a time of
their mutual friends in America, she told him of the girl's agitation
and how, at the last moment, she had broken down. The young man
appeared to be very much concerned, and begged Mrs. Davis to tell Numè
that she had nothing whatever to fear from meeting him. So Mrs. Davis
went into the next room to fetch Numè. She put her arm round the girl
and drew her gently into the room where Orito was. Numè did not raise
her eyes to look at him. He, on the other hand, looked at her very
keenly, taking note of every sweet outline of her face and form. To
please his father he had resumed the Japanese costume, and now, dressed
in his hakama, he looked every inch a Japanese gentleman, and should not
have alarmed Numè so seriously. Yet his manners had lost some of the old
Japanese polish, and as he crossed to her side and lifted her little
hand to his lips, it seemed more the act of a foreigner than that of a
Japanese.
At the light touch of his lips on her hand Numè's confidence returned.
She smiled, shyly, at him. Orito was the first to speak.
"You are not much changed, Numè," he said. "You look just as I expected
you would--and--and you are still a child."
Numè opened her little fan, and then closed it with a swing.
"And you, I thing you so changed that you must be Americazan," she said,
shyly.
They sat and talked very politely to each other for some time, neither
of them alluding to their proposed marriage; in fact, both of them
seemed anxious to steer away from the subject altogether. Orito
addressed her in Japanese, but she, with a strange wish to show off to
him her pitifully limited knowledge of the language of which she was
extremely proud, answered him in English.
Mrs. Davis drew Numè into the next room, before she left, and raising
her little flushed face, looked down into her eyes as though she would
fain have discovered what was going on in her little heart.
"Are you disappointed, dear?"
"No; _me_?--I am _vaery_ joyous," the girl answered, candidly.