One of these celebrations, when Hanano was almost five years old, was an especially busy day for her, as, in addition to her duties as hostess, she received several telephone messages of congratulation, to which, with a feeling of great importance, she replied in person. Her happy day was made more so because her best friend, Susan, brought her little sister, a delicate-faced, golden-haired child who was just learning to walk. Hanano was a gracious hostess to all, but she was especially attentive to the dainty little toddler. That night when she was ready for her usual evening prayer she looked up at me very seriously.
“Mamma, may I say to God just what I please?” she asked.
“Yes, dear,” I replied, but I was startled when, from the little bowed figure with clasped hands, came a sudden, “Hello, God!”
I reached out my hand to check her. Then I remembered that I had always taught her to respect her father next to God, and that was the greeting she used to him when he was too far away to be seen. I softly withdrew my hand. Then again I was startled by the solemn little voice, whispering, “Please give me a little sister like Susan’s.”
I was too much surprised to speak, and she went on with “Now I lay me” to the end.
As I tucked her into bed I said, “How did you happen to ask God for a little sister, Hanano?”
“That’s how Susan got her sister,” she replied. “She prayed for her a long time, and now she’s here.”
I went away a little awed, for I knew her prayer would be answered.
The March festival was long past, and May almost gone, when one morning Hanano’s father told her that she had a little sister and led her into the room where the baby was. Hanano gazed with wide-open, astonished eyes upon black-haired, pink-faced little Chiyo. She said not a word but walked straight down the stairs to Grandma.
“I didn’t pray for that,” she told Mother, with a troubled look. “I wanted a baby with yellow hair like Susan’s little sister.”
Clara happened to be in the room, and with the freedom of an American servant, said, “Yellow hair on a Japanese baby would be a funny sight!” and burst out laughing.
“It’s not a Japanese baby!” Hanano indignantly cried. “I didn’t ask for a Japanese baby! I don’t want a Japanese baby!”
Mother took the child on her lap and told her how proud we all were to have two little Japanese girls in our home, and so brought a slow comfort to the disappointed little heart.
That afternoon Mother saw Hanano sitting a long time very quietly in front of the big mirror that stood between the two front windows of the parlour.
“What is it you see, dear?” Mother asked.
“I s’pose I’m a Japanese girl, too,” Hanano answered slowly. “I don’t look like Susan or Alice.”
She winked several times very fast, then, with a choking gulp, her loyalty to blue eyes and yellow hair succumbed to loyalty to love, and she added, “But Mamma is pretty! I’m going to be like her!” and climbed down from the chair.
No one can sound the depths of a child’s thoughts, but from that day Hanano developed an interest in Japanese things. Matsuo was fond of listening to her prattle and of playing with her, but she depended upon me for stories; and so, night after night, I would talk of our heroes and repeat to her the songs and fairy lore which had been part of my child life. Best of all she liked to have me talk of the pretty black-haired children—I always said they were pretty—who made chains of cherry blossoms or played games in a garden with a stone lantern and a curving bridge that spanned a pond set in the midst of flowers and tiny trees. I almost grew homesick as I painted these word pictures for her, or sat in the twilight singing a plaintive Japanese lullaby to the baby, while Hanano stood beside me, humming softly beneath her breath.
Was this sudden love for the land she had never seen an inheritance, or—for children sometimes seem to be uncannily endowed with insight—was it premonition?
One day the old familiar world ended for me, leaving me with memories—comforting ones and regretful ones—all closely wrapped in a whirl of anxious, frightened questioning, for no longer had I a husband or my children a father. Matsuo, with a last merry word and a sleepy smile, had quickly and painlessly slipped over the border into the old-new country beyond our ken.
And now, for my children and myself, nothing was left but farewells and a long, lonely journey. The country that had reached out so pleasant a welcome to me, that had so willingly pardoned my ignorance and my mistakes, the country where my children were born and where I had received kindness greater than words can express—this wonderful, busy, practical country had no need of, nor did it want, anything that I could give. It had been a broad, kindly, loving home for me and mine, but a place for the present only. It held no promise of usefulness for my growing children and had no need of my old age. And what is life if one can only learn, and of what one learns give nothing?
The past years were like a dream. From a land of misty, poetic ideas I had drifted through a puzzling tangle of practical deeds, gathering valuable thoughts as I floated easily along, and now—back to the land of mist and poesy. What was ahead of me? I wondered.
