stress."

"Time! Time! What do you call time, you ignorant one? It was fifteen
minutes! Yes! We had been talking fifteen minutes when he said I was a
_pleasant_ person! After saying I was an angel!"

"Oh!" said Isonna--which Hoshiko took for reproof.

"I have known him two weeks!"

"Yes," agreed the maid.

"And if you speak--if you suggest again, that which twice nearly escaped
your lips, I will kill you. One night you will lie down, and, into your
horrid, tattling mouth, I will pour, as you sleep, a something which
will prevent you from ever rising. I have it always ready for you."

"But, your father?" whined Isonna.

"I, not my father, am speaking now!"

"I will be silent," agreed the maid.

"What is the use to take the trouble to tell him? Soon he will go and
forget both us and that--what is the use?"

"I will be silent," said the maid, again. "I do not wish to die."

"And then--O Jizo, punish him!" She broke off and addressed another of
her goddesses. "And then he had the unparalleled audacity to ask me what
I had been doing with him all the while he has been here! After he had
said angel repeatedly! O Jizo, punish him!"

"Well, well," comforted the maid, "why did you not inform him? Surely
that was not difficult!"

"Oh! it was not, eh? Well, you blind little beast, do you _know_ what I
_have_ been doing?"

"You have recovered him from his illness with the utmost tenderness and
beauty," said the maid.

"Oh, you little fool!" cried her mistress, first striking her, then
embracing her; "I have been falling in love with him. It happened that
day they carried him into the house of Han-Hai, where live three
daughters, all unmarried. You saw it; you were present! Do you not
remember how beautiful and bloody he was? His eyes were closed, the sun
shone in his face, and that was pale with here and here the windings of
a bandage, like an aureole. Oh, how we both wept! He was so young; and
we thought that we could heal him with great care! We wept. My father
did the one thing which would stop our tears--brought, him here!"

"Yes--yes!" agreed Isonna.

"Now! Shall I tell him?"

"Oh, no, Lady Hoshi, no! That is a dreadful thing to do," sighed the
maid.

"It is not dreadful. It is beautiful."

"But, dear, dear mistress, you must not love a man. That is what your
father pays me to prevent!"

"Well, you haven't prevented it. And I shall tell my father, and he,
also, will kill you and get me some one who