Reflections

” As for her husband, unbeknown to her he took a bit of green silk from her treasure-box and spread it in the cupboard of the toko no ma. There he placed the mirror in its box of white wood.

Every morning early and every evening late, he went to the cupboard of the toko no ma and spoke with his father. Many a jolly talk they had and many a hearty laugh together, and the son was the happiest young man of all that country-side, for he was a simple soul.

But Mistress Tassel had a quick eye and a sharp ear, and it was not long before she marked her husband’s new ways.

“What for does he go so often to the toko no ma,” she asked herself, “and what has he got there? I should be glad enough to know.” Not being one to suffer much in silence, she very soon asked her husband these same things.

He told her the truth, the good young man. “And now I have my dear old father home again, I’m as happy as the day is long,” he says.

“H’m,” she says.

“And wasn’t two bu cheap,” he says, “and wasn’t it a strange thing altogether?”

“Cheap, indeed,” says she, “and passing strange; and why, if I may ask,” she says, “did you say nought of all this at the first?”

The young man grew red.

“Indeed, then, I cannot tell you, my dear,” he says. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know,” and with that he went out to his work.

Up jumped Mistress Tassel the minute his back was turned, and to the toko no ma she flew on the wings of the wind and flung open the doors with a clang.

“My green silk for sleeve-linings!” she cried at once; “but I don’t see any old father here, only a white wooden box. What can he keep in it?”

She opened the box quickly enough.

“What an odd flat shining thing!” she said, and, taking up the mirror, looked into it.

For a moment she said nothing at all, but the great tears of anger and jealousy stood in her pretty eyes, and her face flushed from forehead to chin.

“A woman!” she cried, “a woman! So that is his secret! He keeps a woman in this cupboard. A woman, very young and very pretty—no, not pretty at all, but she thinks herself so.