per shade, hung like an aureole above the head
of Yuki Chan's mother as she knelt with clasped hands before the
Buddha on the shelf.

Her moving lips had only one refrain: "The child, the child, the
child."

Yuki Chan watched the play of the light in the half-dark room. What
funny things those shadows made, and, strangely enough, one more
wonderful than all the rest grew into the shape of the boy, and his
lips were saying, "Be good."

Then Yuki Chan lost herself in a mist of drowsiness, and her mother
sat by, and kept time with her hand as she chanted rather than sang:

"Sleep, little one, sleep.
The sparrows are nodding.
Beneath the deep willow-trees
The night-lamp is burning.
Thy mother is watching,
Sleep, little one, sleep."

CHAPTER III

Twelve times had the plum-tree scattered its petals to the wind, and
Yuki San [Footnote: The honorific _Chan_, used only in childhood, is
changed to _San_ in later years.] had passed from childhood into
girlhood, and had already touched the border of that grave land
of grown-up, where all the worries lie. For though she was apparently
only a larger edition of the spoiled, impulsive happy child of old,
yet often her eyes were shadowed with the struggle of shielding her
aging father and mother from the poverty that was coming closer day by
day.

During the three years she had been gaining her education at the
English mission-school, they had toiled unceasingly that she might
have the best the country could afford, but now that she had returned
after her long struggle with a strange language and a strange people,
it was but fitting that she should take up her duties as the daughter
of an impoverished family of high rank. The father, grown old and
feeble, gave up the battle for existence, and being a devout Buddhist,
turned his thoughts upon Nirvana, which he strove diligently to enter
by perpetual meditation and prayer. The mother, used to guidance and
unable to think or plan for herself, turned helplessly to Yuki San.

The duties were heavy for girlish shoulders, and often as the dawn
crept over the mountains it found the girl wide-eyed and still, trying
to solve the problem of modest demand and meager supply.

She had learned many things at the mission-school. She could read and
write English imperfectly, she could recite the multiplication table
faster than any one else, she could perform the most intricate figures
in physical