"Oh, she"s probably good enough at writing. It"s just speaking that stumps her. But wasn"t she killingly funny? When she said "my estates have unto this place arriving come," I thought I should have to departing go along with you. But it would have been rude beyond words.
What a dear little thing she is! I think I"ll go over later and see how she is. America must be polite to her visitors."
But j.a.pan, always beforehand in ceremonious politeness, was again ahead of America in this respect. Just before ten o"clock the mouse"s tail once more brushed their door and Nance"s sharp ears catching the faint sound, she called, "Come in."
Miss Otoyo Sen entered, this time less timidly, but with the same deprecating smile on her diminutive face.
"Begging honorable pardon of beautiful young ladies," she began, "will condescendingly to accept unworthy gift from Otoyo in grat.i.tude of favors receiving?"
Then she produced a beautiful j.a.panese scroll at least four feet in length. In the background loomed up the snow-capped peak of the ever-present sacred mountain, Fujiyama, and the foreground disclosed a pleasing combination of sky-blue waters dotted with picturesque little islands connected with graceful curving bridges, and here and there were cherry trees aglow with delicate pink blossoms.
"Oh, how perfectly sweet," exclaimed the girls, delighted.
"And just the place on this bare wall s.p.a.ce!" continued Molly. "It"s really a heaven-sent gift, Miss Sen, because we were wishing for something really beautiful to hang over that divan. But aren"t you robbing yourself?"
"No, no. I beg you a.s.surance. Otoyo have many suchly. It is nothing.
Beautiful young ladies do honor by accepting humbly gift."
"Let"s hang it at once," suggested Molly, "while the step ladder is yet with us. Queen"s step ladder is so much in demand that it"s very much like the snowfall in the river, "a moment there, then gone forever.""
The two girls moved the homely but coveted ladder across the room, and, with much careful shifting and after several suggestions timidly made by Otoyo, finally hung up the scroll. It really glorified the whole room and made a framed lithograph of a tea-drinking lady in a boudoir costume and a kitten that trifled with a ball of yarn on the floor, Nance"s possession, appear so commonplace that she shamefacedly removed it from its tack and put it back in her trunk, to Molly"s secret relief.
"Won"t you sit down and talk to us a few minutes?" asked Nance. "We still have a quarter of an hour before bed time."
Otoyo timidly took a seat on a corner of one of the divans. The girls could not help noticing another small package which she had not yet proffered for their acceptance. But she now placed it in Nance"s hand.
"A little of what American lady call "meat-sweet,"" she said apologetically. "It all way from j.a.pan have coming. Will beautiful ladies accept so humbly gift?"
The box contained candied ginger and was much appreciated by young American ladies, the humble giver of this delightful confection being far too shy to eat any of it herself.
By dint of some questioning, it came out that Otoyo"s father was a merchant of Tokio. She had been sent to an American school in j.a.pan for two years and had also studied under an English governess. She could read English perfectly and, strange to say, could write it fairly accurately, but, when it came to speaking it, she clung to her early participial-adverbial faults, although she trusted to overcome them in a very little while. She had several conditions to work off before Thanksgiving, but she was cheerful and her ambition was to be "beautiful American young lady."
She was, indeed, the most charming little doll-like creature the girls had ever seen, so unreal and different from themselves, that they could hardly credit her with the feelings and sensibilities of a human being.
So correctly polite was she with such formal, stiff little manners that she seemed almost an automaton wound up to bow and nod at the proper moment. But Otoyo Sen was a creature of feeling, as they were to find out before very long.
"Did many girls come down on the train with you to-night, Miss Sen?"
asked Nance, by way of making conversation.
Several young ladies had come, Miss Sen replied in her best participial manner. All had been kind to Otoyo but one, who had frightened poor j.a.panese very, very much. One very kind American gentleman had been commissioned to bring little j.a.panese down from big city to University.
He had look after her all day and brought her sandwiches. He friend of her father and most, most kindly. He had receiving letters from her honorable father to look after little j.a.panese girl.
Across the aisle from Otoyo had sat a "beeg young American lady, beeg as kindly young lady there with peenk hair," indicating Molly. The "beeg"
young American lady, it seems, had great "beeg" eyes, so: Otoyo made two circles with her thumbs and forefingers to indicate size of young American lady"s optics. She called Otoyo "Yum-Yum" and she made to laugh at humble j.a.panese girl, but Otoyo could see that young American lady with beeg eyes feeling great anger toward little strange girl.
"But for what reason?" asked Molly, slipping her arm around Otoyo"s plump waist. "How could she be unkind to sweet little j.a.panese stranger?"
"Young great-eyed lady laugh at me mostly and I very uncomfortably." She brought out the big word with proud effort.
"But how cruel! Why did she do it?" exclaimed Nance.
Here Otoyo gave a delicious melodious laugh for the first time that evening.
"She not like kindly gentlemanly friend to be attentionly to humble j.a.panese."
"What was the gentleman"s name, Otoyo?" asked Molly; and somewhat to her surprise Otoyo, who, as they were to learn later, never forgot a name, came out patly with:
"Professor Edwin Green, kindly friend of honorable father."
"Did the young lady call him "Cousin"?" asked Nance in the tone of one who knows what the answer will be beforehand.
"Yes," answered Otoyo Sen.
"The same old Judith Blount," laughed Molly.
And Nance recalled Judy"s prophetic speech on the last day of college in June: "Can the le-o-pard change his spots?"
Then the first stroke of the tower clock began to chime the hour of ten and they promptly conducted Otoyo to her bedroom with the caution that all lights must be out at ten, a rule she followed thereafter with implicit obedience.
The next morning, Molly and Nance took Otoyo under their especial care.
They introduced her to all the girls at Queen"s, placed her between them at Chapel, showed her how to register and finally took her on a sight-seeing expedition.
It turned out that through Professor Green her room had been engaged since early the winter before. Why he should have chosen Queen"s they hardly knew, since Otoyo appeared to have plenty of money and might have lived in more expensive quarters. But Queen"s he had selected, and that very evening he called on Mrs. Markham to see that his little charge was comfortably settled. Molly caught a glimpse of him as he followed the maid through the hall to Mrs. Markham"s sitting room, and made him a polite bow. She felt somewhat in awe of the Professor of English Literature this winter, since she was to be in one of his cla.s.ses, Lit. II, and was very fearful that he might consider her a perfect dunce. But Professor Green would not pa.s.s Molly with a bow. He paused at the door of the living room and held out his hand.
"I"m glad to see you back and looking so well," he said. "My sister asked to be remembered to you. I saw her only yesterday."
The Professor looked well, also. His brown eyes were as clear as two brown pools in the forest and there was a healthy glow on his face; but Molly could not help noticing that he was growing bald about the temples.
"Too bad he"s so old," she thought, "because sometimes he"s really handsome."
"I am commissioned," he continued, "to find a tutor for a young j.a.panese girl boarding here, and I wondered if you would like to undertake the work. She needs lessons in English chiefly, but she has several conditions to work off and it would be a steady position for anyone who has time to take it. Her father is a rich man and willing to pay more than the usual price if he can get someone specially interested who will take pains with his daughter"s education."
"I"m willing to do all that," said Molly, "but it goes with the job, don"t you think? I have no right to ask more than is usually asked."
"Oh, yes, you have," answered the Professor quickly. "What you can give her means everything to the child. She is naturally very timid and strange. If you are willing to give up several hours to her, say four times a week, I will arrange about salary with her father and the lessons may begin immediately."
It was impossible for Molly to disguise her feelings of relief and joy at this windfall. Her lack of funds was, as usual, an ever-present shadow in the background of her mind, although, through some fine investments which Mrs. Brown had been able to make that summer, the Brown family hoped to be relieved by another year of the pressure of poverty.
CHAPTER III.
A CLASHING OF WITS.
Queen"s Cottage seemed destined to shelter girls of interesting and unusual types.
"They always do flock together, you know," Miss Pomeroy had remarked to the President, as the two women sat talking in the President"s office one day. The question had come up with the subject of the new j.a.panese student, the first of her nation ever to seek learning in the halls of Wellington.
"They do," said the President, "but whether it"s the first comers actively persuading the next ones or whether it"s a matter of unconscious attraction is hard to tell."