"They throw prayers," answered Seki San very seriously, "they buy paper prayers from the old man at the gate, and throw them through the grating. If the prayer sticks, it is answered, if it falls down it is not answered. Come, I will show you!"
They went very close, and looked through the bars; there on the grating, on the floor and even on the ceiling above them were ma.s.ses of tiny paper wads, the unanswered prayers of departed thousands.
"Well, three of mine stuck!" said June with satisfaction. "Do you suppose it"s too late to make a prayer on them now?"
Seki thought after considering the matter that it was not.
"But I haven"t got anything left to pray for!" said June, regretting the lost opportunity. "Father"s getting well, and he and Mother are coming home, and I have got pretty near everything I want. I believe I"d like another fish though, and oh! yes, I want a little pug dog, jes" "zactly like Tomi."
"It"s tiffin time," said Seki San, "and after that will be the fire-work."
"In the day-time?" asked June.
"Oh yes, very fine nice fire-work," said Seki.
They left the temple grounds, and made their way up the river road, where everybody was having a tea-party out under the trees. Seki San secured a tiny table for them and they sat on their heels and ate rice out of a great white wooden bucket, and fluffy yellow omelet out of a round bowl, and the sunshine came dancing down through the dainty, waving bamboo leaves, and everybody was laughing and chattering and from every side came the click-clack of the wooden shoes, and the tinkle of samisens and the music of falling water.
Suddenly Toro pulled June"s sleeve and motioned excitedly to the road-way. Coming toward them in a jinrikisha, looking very pale and thin and with both arms in bandages, sat Monsieur.
June broke away from Seki and raced after the jinrikisha. "Oh! Mister,"
he cried, "Mr. Frenchman."
Monsieur, hearing the English words, stopped his man and turned around.
When he saw a very flushed little boy in blouse suit and a wide brimmed hat, he smiled.
"Ah!" he cried, "my friend of the garden! My prince who found the Sleeping Beauty." Then he began to laugh so hard that it started up all his rheumatic pains, and he had to sink back and rest before he could speak again. "I am very bad since I saw you last," he said; "these dogs of j.a.panese will let me die here. One day in France will make me well. I may have it yet--I must get back some way--some way!" His eyes looked excitedly over June"s head out into s.p.a.ce as if trying to span the miles that lay between him and his beloved country.
"My papa will take you home when he comes," said June; "he"s a soldier."
Monsieur shrugged his shoulders: "Your papa would not care _that_," he said, snapping his fingers; then seeing June"s disappointment he added kindly, "But you--will you not come to see me? I will make you more forts, I will show you my goldfish."
"Yes, I"ll come," said June. "When?"
But before Monsieur could answer, Seki had called June and the jinrikisha had started on its way.
Late in the afternoon, as the revelers straggled home tired but happy, June slipped his hand into Seki"s. The merry noises of the day had given place to the quiet chirp of the crickets and the drowsy croaking of the frogs, and the little breezes that stirred overhead sounded sleepy and far away.
"Seki," said June, "I didn"t make any prayer on that paper that stuck on the old giant"s nose, do you think it too late?"
"No," said Seki San, willing to humor him.
"Well," said June sleepily, "I pray that the French gentleman will get back home."
CHAPTER VI
ONE morning several weeks later, June was lying on his back in the garden wishing he had someone to play with. Toro was away at school and Seki San was having her hair dressed. He had watched the latter performance so many times that it had ceased to interest him. Seki would sit for hours on a white mat before the old hair-dresser who combed, and looped and twisted the long oily strands into b.u.t.terfly bows of shining black.
The only person on the premises who was at leisure was Tomi, but that was just the trouble, he was so much at leisure that he refused to stir from his warm spot on the sunny steps no matter how much June coaxed. To be sure there was a yellow cat next door, but she did not understand English as Tomi did, and when June called her, she humped her back and would have ruffled her tail if she had had one, but j.a.panese cats do not have tails, so when they get angry they always look disappointed.
Just as June was getting a bit lonesome the postboy came trotting in with a letter for Seki San and June ran in to take it to her.
"For me?" said Seki San, looking very comical with one loop of black hair hanging over her eye, "from Meester Carre? I sink it is a mistake, I do not know Meester Carre."
"Read it," demanded June impatiently.
"It say," went on Seki San slowly, "that Meester Carre is not able to write hisself but he desire the writer to ask me will I permit the little American boy to come to see him to-day. He is sick on the bed, and have the low spirit. He will keep safe care of the little boy and send him home what time I desire."
"Oh, let me go, Seki! Please let me go!" cried June.
"But who is Meester Carre?"
"He is the Frenchman," said June. "He is a soldier and has got the rheumatism. He has goldfish too, and a sword. Oh Seki, please let me go!
Oh, do let me go!"
"Ah yes," said Seki, "one leg is shorter than the other leg and he walks with sticks, and he has long white whiskers on his lip, ah! yes, I know."
"Can I go?" begged June.
Seki San took a long while to think about it. She consulted her mother and the old man next door, and the doctor who lived at the corner, but by and by she came back and said he could go.
"I will send you in good Tanaka"s "rikisha, he will take good care of you and bring you back at tiffin time."
June was greatly excited over the prospect and stood unusually still while Seki San b.u.t.toned him into a starchy white blouse and pinned a scarlet flower in his b.u.t.tonhole.
"Can"t I pin my flag on too?" he begged, and Seki, who could not bear to refuse him anything, fastened the bit of red, white and blue silk on the other side.
"Now keep your body still," cautioned Seki San as she put him in the jinrikisha and gave final instructions to Tanaka who was bowing and grinning and bowing again, "Tanaka will wait for you, and you must come when he calls you. Be good little boy! _Sayonara!_"
June had never felt so important in his life. To be going out all by himself in a jinrikisha was quite like being grown up. The only thing lacking to make him quite happy was a pair of reins that he might imagine he was driving a horse instead of a little brown man with fat bare legs and a big mushroom hat who looked around every few moments to see if he was falling out.
They trotted along the sunny streets, pa.s.sing the temple grounds where the green and red Nio made ugly faces all the day, and where the greedy pigeons were waiting for more corn. They pa.s.sed over the long bridge, skirted the parade ground, then went winding in and out of narrow streets until they came to a stretch of country road that ran beside a moat.
Here there was less to see and June amused himself by repeating the few j.a.panese words he had learned. "Ohayo" meant "good-morning," and it was great fun to call it out to the children they pa.s.sed and see them bow and call back "Ohayo" in friendly greeting. He knew another word too, it was "Arigato," and it meant "thank you." He used it on Tanaka every time he stopped by the wayside to pluck a flower for him. Once when they rested June saw a queer old tree, with a very short body and very long arms that seemed to be seeing how far they could reach. June thought the tree must have the rheumatism, for it was standing on crutches, and had knots on its limbs just like Monsieur had on his fingers. But the strange part of it was that from nearly every branch fluttered a small strip of paper with something written on it. June had seen this before on other trees, and he remembered that Seki San had told him that these little papers were poems hung there when the tree was covered with cherry blossoms.
Now June always wanted to do everything anybody else did, so when they started off again, he decided that he would make up a poem to hang on the tree as they came back. He knew one that he had learned from a big boy coming over on the steamer, and he said it over softly to himself:
"King Solomon was the wisest man; He had some ready cash, The Queen of Sheeny came along And Solly made a mash."
To be sure he didn"t understand at all what it meant, but it sounded nice and funny and always made him laugh.
"I"d like to make up one out of my own head though," he thought, and he sat so still that Tanaka glanced back uneasily.
It was a very hard matter indeed, for when you write a poem you have to get two words that sound alike, and then find something to write about them. It took him so long that by the time he finished, the shaft of the jinrikisha came down with a jerk and he looked up to find that they had stopped in front of a house all smothered in vines, with two inquisitive little windows peering out like eyes behind a tangle of hair. Everything about the place looked poor and neglected.
As June and Tanaka made their way up the path, June gave an exclamation of delight. There about the door were bowls and jars and basins of goldfish. Every available receptacle had been pressed into service, and big fish and tiny ones in every shade of radiant gold swam gaily about in the sunshine.