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Updated: June 18, 2025
They spoke in low, rapid voices and their faces were so calm and unemotional they might have been two Japanese dolls wound tip to move the lips and occasionally make a slight gesture with one hand. Presently Onoye slipped from her obi a small package done up in crêpe paper and gave it to O'Kami, who concealed it in the voluminous folds of her own kimono.
Mary and Billie regarded her with compassion. How little romance there was in a Japanese girl's life! O'Kami San, so young and pretty and charming, too, was about to enter into years of drudgery perhaps; the wife of a cranky old man, and here she was accepting her fate as calmly as a novitiate about to take the vows for life and enter a convent. "New husband much rich," she said. "Much old.
Ah, much work to become wife." "You are not thinking of marrying, surely? Your brother says you are only sixteen," protested Mary. O'Kami nodded her head and smiled. "Arrange all the day before to this." "Do you love him?" asked Mary, in an awed tone of voice. O'Kami looked puzzled. The word "love" she had not learned. "O'Kami much happy. Honorable mother of husband not any more. Gone."
The storm of weeping had passed now and she lay quite still, but at intervals there was that catch in the breath which follows a period of bitter crying. The three American girls paused at the edge of the miniature lawn about the shrine and exchanged embarrassed glances. O'Kami Sail drew back a step or two.
"I hope you will be very happy, O'Kami San," said Mary. "I believe you said there was no mother-in-law." "Not no mother-in-law," answered the bride, in the tone of one describing a great blessing. "Honorable husband of age like mother-in-law." "You mean your husband is not young?" O'Kami San nodded. "Verily old," she said, with just the faintest quiver at the corners of her mouth.
"God bless you, O'Kami San," called Billie, leaning far out of the window. And if the little Japanese girl did not understand the meaning of the salutation she comprehended the spirit of it. "Receive thanks," she said formally, her eyes glistening suspiciously. Billie watched her sadly.
Both Japanese women were beautifully dressed and it came out during the conversation that the young bride was wearing no less than five elaborate kimonos. "But why?" demanded Billie. O'Kami San explained that it was to avoid the inconveniences of luggage. They were going to a little town in the hills and it would be difficult to carry trunks.
But O'Kami San was not inclined to be communicative, and they were obliged to return to the summer-house with their curiosity entirely unsatisfied. In the meantime, Miss Campbell and Nancy were in a painful state of embarrassment about what to say next.
They exchanged low, ceremonious bows and Onoye hurried away, while O'Kami turned to the mystified young-Americans with an apologetic smile. "Receive excuses and pardon grant," she said. Billie made a superhuman effort not to laugh, while Mary stooped to break off a spray of azaleas and Elinor examined intently a stunted pine tree planted in a big green jar near the path.
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