, I wrote to
the school where my mother and I visited twelve years ago, and asked
them to recommend a family that would be good enough to take me in for
two months. Strangely enough your father's name was suggested, and
when I read that the only daughter both spoke and wrote English, and
that her name was Yuki San, my mind flew back to my "Little Sister
Snow" of the days gone by.

Could your father manage to accommodate me for a couple of months, if
I promise to be very good and take up as little room as possible? If
you think he can, please wire me here at Yokohama, and I'll come
straight down.

Hoping to see you very soon, I am

Your old friend,

RICHARD MELTON MERRIT.

Yuki San turned the letter this way and that, and vainly tried to
decipher the strange words. It was undoubtedly English, but not the
English she was used to. She ran for her small dictionary and
diligently searched out the meaning of each phrase.

Yes, she remembered the boy--he had light hair, and blue eyes that
laughed, and he was a big, big boy and carried her on his shoulder.

She sat with the folded letter clasped carefully in her hands and gave
herself up to joyous anticipation. A foreign guest was coming to stay
two whole months in her house; after that she was to be married and
wear her beautiful kimono, and give rich gifts to her father and
mother.

Surely Buddha was caring for her! There had been grave moments of
doubt about it since she left the mission-school, for he had never
seemed to listen, though she prayed him night and day. But he had been
only waiting to send all her happiness at once--he was a good god,
kind and thoughtful. To-morrow, before the sun touched the big
pine-tree on the mountain-top, she would go to the temple and tell
him so.

Yuki San's plans found favor with her parents, chiefly because of
their great desire to give her pleasure, and incidentally because the
board of the foreigner would swell the fund that was needed for her
marriage.

The plighted maid to them was already the wife, and the danger of a
youthful heart defying tradition and clearing the bars of
conventionality to reach its own desire was something unknown to these
simple people. The child wished the foreigner to come--they could give
her few pleasures--she should have her desire.

The sending of the telegram was the first exciting thing to be
attended to. Five times Yuki San rewrote the short message, finding
her fingers less deft tha