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Reflections

The long and short of it was that they found the young man a wife. She was young, and as pretty as a picture. Her name was Tassel, just that, or Fusa, as they say in her language.

After they had drunk down the “Three Times Three” together and so became man and wife, they stood alone, the young man looking hard at the girl. For the life of him he did not know what to say to her. He took a bit of her sleeve and stroked it with his hand. Still he said nothing and looked mighty foolish. The girl turned red, turned pale, turned red again, and burst into tears.

“Honourable Tassel, don’t do that, for the dear gods’ sake,” says the young man.

“I suppose you don’t like me,” sobs the girl. “I suppose you don’t think I’m pretty.”

“My dear,” he says, “you’re prettier than the bean-flower in the field; you’re prettier than the little bantam hen in the farm-yard; you’re prettier than the rose carp in the pond. I hope you’ll be happy with my father and me.”

At this she laughed a little and dried her eyes. “Get on another pair of hakama,” she says, “and give me those you’ve got on you; there’s a great hole in them—I was noticing it all the time of the wedding!”

Well, this was not a bad beginning, and taking one thing with another they got on pretty well, though of course things were not as they had been in that blessed time when the young man and his father did not set eyes upon a pair of long sleeves or an obi from morning till night.

By and by, in the way of nature, the old man died. It is said he made a very good end, and left that in his strong-box which made his son the richest man in the country-side. But this was no comfort at all to the poor young man, who mourned his father with all his heart. Day and night he paid reverence to the tomb. Little sleep or rest he got, and little heed he gave to his wife, Mistress Tassel, and her whimsies, or even to the delicate dishes she set before him. He grew thin and pale, and she, poor maid, was at her wits’ end to know what to do with him.

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