Reflections

A dancing-girl from Kioto, I’ll be bound; ill-tempered too—her face is scarlet; and oh, how she frowns, nasty little spitfire. Ah, who could have thought it of him? Ah, it’s a miserable girl I am—and I’ve cooked his daikon and mended his hakama a hundred times. Oh! oh! oh!”

With that, she threw the mirror into its case, and slammed-to the cupboard door upon it. Herself she flung upon the mats, and cried and sobbed as if her heart would break.

In comes her husband.

“I’ve broken the thong of my sandal,” says he, “and I’ve come to—— But what in the world?” and in an instant he was down on his knees beside Mistress Tassel doing what he could to comfort her, and to get her face up from the floor where she kept it.

“Why, what is it, my own darling?” says he.

“Your own darling!” she answers very fierce through her sobs; and “I want to go home,” she cries.

“But, my sweet, you are at home, and with your own husband.”

“Pretty husband!” she says, “and pretty goings-on, with a woman in the cupboard! A hateful, ugly woman that thinks herself beautiful; and she has my green sleeve-linings there with her to boot.”

“Now, what’s all this about women and sleeve-linings? Sure you wouldn’t grudge poor old father that little green rag for his bed? Come, my dear, I’ll buy you twenty sleeve-linings.”

At that she jumped to her feet and fairly danced with rage.

“Old father! old father! old father!” she screamed; “am I a fool or a child? I saw the woman with my own eyes.”

The poor young man didn’t know whether he was on his head or his heels. “Is it possible that my father is gone?” he said, and he took the mirror from the toko no ma.

“That’s well; still the same old father that I bought for two bu. You seem worried, father; nay, then, smile as I do. There, that’s well.”

Mistress Tassel came like a little fury and snatched the mirror from his hand. She gave but one look into it and hurled it to the other end of the room. It made such a clang against the woodwork, that servants and neighbours came rushing in to see what was the matter.