deals and a
blind enthusiasm for her mother's people.

Right here, Mate, was when I had a prolonged attack of cold
shivers. Just before Miss West passed along, knowing that the
Valley was near, she wrote to Uncle in Japan and told him that his
niece would soon he alone. Can't you imagine the picture she drew
of her foster child who had satisfied every craving of her big
mother heart? Fascinating and charming and so weighted with
possibilities, that Mura, who had prospered, leaped for his chance
and sent Sada San money for the passage over.

Not a mite of anxiety shadowed her eyes when she told me that Uncle
kept a wonderful tea-house in Kioto. He must be very rich, she
thought, because he wrote her of the beautiful things she was to
have. About this time the room seemed suffocating. I got up and
turned on the electric fan. The only thing required of her, she
continued, was to use her voice to entertain Uncle's friends. But
she hoped to do much more. Through Miss West she knew how many of
her mother's dear people needed help. How glorious that she was
young and strong and could give so much. Susan had also talked to
her of the flowers, the lovely scenery, the poetry of the people
and their splendid spirit--making a dreamland where even man was
perfect. How she loved it! How proud she was to feel that in part
it was her country. Faithfully would she serve it. Oh, Susanna
West! I 'd like to shake you till your harp snapped a string. It
's like sending a baby to pick flowers on the edge of a bottomless
pit.

What could I say! The missionary-teacher had told the truth. She
simply failed to mention that in the fairy-land there are
cherry-blossom lanes down which no human can wander without being
torn by the brier patches.

The path usually starts from a wonderful tea-house where Uncles
have grown rich. Miss West didn't mean to shirk her duty. In most
things the begoggled lady was a visionary with a theory that if you
don't talk about a thing it does not exist; and like most of her
kind she swept the disagreeables into a dust heap and made for the
high places where all was lovely. And yet she had toiled with the
girl through all the difficulties of the Japanese language; and, to
give her a musical education, had pinched to the point of buying
one hat in eight years!

Now it is all done and Sada is launched on the high seas of life
with a pleasure-house for a home and an unscrupulous Uncle with
un