MOTHER. Yes, certainly. Especially, as he would not lose a moment if he could help it in hurrying home and making you and me glad by showing us the money. I cannot understand it. ICHIMONJIYA. Well, whether you understand it or not, that is your business. I will hand you the balance and take the girl home. RECITATIVE. He takes the money from his bosom. ICHIMONJIYA. Here is the remaining fifty _ryo_; and it makes up the hundred ryo. I hand it to you, and so take it. MOTHER. But before your father comes home, I cannot let you go, can I, Karu? ICHIMONJIYA. Why, dawdling like this, we shall never have done. See, here is Yoichibei’s seal; you have not a word to say now. This bond speaks for me. This girl’s service I have bought with money to-day; and a day’s delay means so much loss to me. I suppose I must use force. RECITATIVE. He seizes Okaru by the hand and drags her. MOTHER. Please, wait. RECITATIVE. The mother clings to him; but he pushes her away. He forces Okaru into the palanquin. But just as it is lifted up, Kanpei returns, gun on his shoulder and with a straw rain-coat and hat on. He enters the house. KANPEI. My wife in the palanquin, where are you going? MOTHER. I am glad you have come home at this moment. RECITATIVE. He wonders at the mother’s joy. KANPEI. There appears to be something at the bottom of this. Mother, wife, let me hear it. RECITATIVE. And he sits right in the middle of the room. ICHIMONJIYA. Oh, are you the girl’s husband? Here is the bond with the old man’s seal, in which he says no one whatever, be he the girl’s husband, actual or affianced, shall offer any obstruction. And I don’t care who you are, and I am going to take away the girl at once. MOTHER. Oh, you are no doubt puzzled, my son. We had heard from our daughter that you were in want of money; and much as we wished to get it for you, we had no prospect of procuring a single _sen_. And so says my old man, “I do not suppose our son is thinking of getting the money by selling his wife; but it may be that he has such a wish and is deterred from carrying it out only by the presence of her parents. What if this old father sells her without his knowledge? It is a custom with the samurai, when other means are exhausted, to take her back by force. It is no shame to sell one’s wife, and if I find for him in this way the money he requires in his lord’s cause, I do not think he will be very angry with me.” So yesterday he went to Gion-machi to settle the matter, but he has not come home yet. While we, I and my daughter, were feeling anxious at his absence, comes this man and says that as he gave the old man half the sum last night, he will pay the remaining fifty _ryo_ now and take away my daughter this moment. I tell him I must see the old man first, but he won’t listen to me, and insists upon taking her away. What shall we do, Kanpei?