The House of the Misty Star / A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan

th each visit. His good breeding and gentle rearing were as innate as the brightness of his eyes; and no less evident was his sore need of companionship, though when

necessitated his coming to my house

Jane Gray usually sat, busy with her endless knitting of bibs for babies. Close beside her the maids, Pine Tree and Maple Leaf, looked up from their sea

and stretched his long limbs toward the glowing grate stove, while he read to us tales of travel and fiction. Jane said they were as del

him to choose for advance in fortune this Buddhist stronghold of moats and medieval castles, so limited in possibilities, so far from contact with foreign

h the presence of company forbade my removing. However, I did not question him openly; I tried not to do so in my heart. I found for him more students as well as excuses to mend his clothes and have him

t he accepted so much waiting on and coddling. He was always deferential, but delighte

sudden knock or when he was definitely questioned, there was something in his attitude which I

less something seemed to cover us, and in passing, left

there because we found comfort and joy. Old Ishi, the gardener, attended because he hoped to discover the witch that made the music inside the baby organ. At the same

ame in at this hour a

cord the border of holier things, banished difference

pleasant evening, he with his pipe and book, I with a pile of English compositions to be corrected. "Change" was the subject of the first one I picked up, and I read the opening paragraph aloud:

ppearance. "Spontaneous combustion" nearly fitted the state of mind he disclosed to me. The change in him was startling. I had only seen the school superintendent outside his home. I

table foe to his will and his calm, for of course the trouble was Zura. I learned this after he had finished acknowledging hi

of his ancestors, the health of his rela

nding, and ind

as upside down. In his haste to right it he broke other laws of convention. Page had withdrawn into the shadow of

n to them nor to the conditions. It had come almost to open warfare. "And," declared the troubled man, "if she does not render obedience I w

peration a girl of Zura's temperament and that, to my

k of this land written for the guidance of women, 'The lifelong duty of women is obedience. Seeing that it is a girl's destiny on reaching womanhood to go to

able book. Its antiquated laws are as withered as the dead needles of a pine tree. Any one reading it

ker he went on. "Dead these sacred laws may be in practice, but the great spirit of them must live, else man in this land will cease to be master in

arity with the Scriptures. He also possessed a knack of interpreting any phase of it to strengthen the argument from his standpoint. But I, too, could fight for ideals; love of freedom and the divine

erless creeds. Each creed claims superiority. This brings inharmony and causes Christians to snap at each other like a p

nment of which he boasted led as often to despair as it did to Nirvana. If his knowledge were so all-i

of tea, hoping it would cool him off, and

e floor three times. Zura had refused to approach the spot and, when he insisted, instead of bowing she had looked straight at the g

lose neighbors in the same brain, for I knew Kishimoto San to be an honest man. He

for her destiny as a wife. She absented herself from the house a whole day at a time. When she returned she said, without the slightest shame, that she had been ra

t of her reckless doings. She is open and ho

e definition for it. Immodesty! In a young girl that is deadlier

anding, then thrust upon him for solution. He was a faithful adherent of the old system where individuality counted for nothing and a woman for less. To his idea the salvation of a girl depended on her submission to the rules laid down by his ancestors for the women of his house.

red to change the subject by consulting Kishimoto San upon important school matters. The

f. If she failed in filial piety and obedience to him, how could she ever learn th

butterfly. Not without a struggle the conservative grandfather acknowledged that his system had failed. For the first time since I had known him Kishimoto San, with genuine humility, appealed for help. "Madam, my granddaughter i

as deep as a cave. I would begin at once to exc

lies in the fact that Zura and you do not understand each other. Suppose you permit her to come to me

asions, greatly relieved, he quickly accepted my invitation. "You do my house grea

face suggested that a smile might pene

untry have to go up against?" Page asked wh

it, as they know their fate and can accept it from babyhood. The suffering falls upon the a

lights below, which were fluttering in the velvety darkness like a va