to be said to Mino. Too much powder is
used on the face. Unless the colour of the skin be very dark, the use of
too much powder is not good. Mino is to be warned against excess." Thus
spoke the official in his most official tone and manner. Wife and
daughter heard and disobeyed; the wife because she was ruled by her
daughter, and the daughter because she would emulate the fair skin of
Densuke and be fairer in his eyes. O'Mino had suffered both from fate
and fortune. She had been born ugly; with broad, flat face like unto the
moon at full, or a dish. Her back was a little humped, her arms
disproportionately long, losing in plumpness what they gained in
extension. She seemed to have no breasts at all, the chest forming a
concavity in correspondence to the convexity of the back, with a
smoothness much like the inner surface of a bowl. This perhaps was no
disadvantage--under the conditions. So much for fate. But fortune had
been no kinder. "Blooming" into girlhood, she had been attacked by
smallpox. Matazaemon was busy, and knew nothing of sick nursing. O'Naka
was equally ignorant, though she was well intentioned. Of course the
then serving wench knew no more than her mistress. O'Mino was allowed to
claw her countenance and body, as the itching of the sores drove her
nearly frantic. In fact, O'Naka in her charity aided her. The result was
that she was most hideously pock-marked. Furthermore, the disease cost
her an eye, leaving a cavity, a gaping and unsightly wound, comparable
to the dumplings called _kuzumanju_, white puffy masses of rice dough
with a depression in the centre marked by a dab of the dark-brown bean
paste. The neighbours used to say that O'Mino was _nin san bake
shichi_--that is, three parts human and seven parts apparition. The more
critical reduced her humanity to the factor one. The children had no
name for her but "Oni" (fiend). They had reason for this. They would not
play with her, and treated her most cruelly. O'Mino, who was of no mild
temperament, soon learned to retaliate by use of an unusually robust
frame, to which was united by nature and circumstances her father's
acidity of character. When the odds were not too great all the tears
were not on O'Mino's side; but she suffered greatly, and learned with
years that the Tamiya garden was her safest playground.

O'Mino grew into a woman. Affection had to find some outlet. Not on the
practical and very prosaic mother; not on the absorbed and crabbed