To-day I will make myself mistress of a hillside coffee-house. The poet—the eternally sweet poet—hastened to borrow a tent from a neighbour. He set it on the greenest spot of grass before my cottage. I must excuse his conceit, he entreated, in showing his skill by baking a cake for me. “Accept my hundred arigatos!” I bowed demonstratively. I pasted a paper—such a bashful brown piece from a butcher’s table—with the sign of “BISHOPS’ REST.” The poet tacked “Ten Cents for Coffee and Cake” on the fence by the tent. The cups (what a shame that their arms were all off) were rinsed, when he showed me an imperial poundcake, declaring it his own manufacture. At three o’clock I was fully prepared for an honorable guest. The coffee on the oil-stove was surging, when two parties went by, not spending even one look at my sign. “Times are awfully hard, I think. People have not luxury enough to spare even a dime,” I murmured sadly. I said that I would have no business, if I didn’t make the next party my victim. I appeared before the tent, when a few girls—who were born for laughing, but not for thinking—came close by. “Will you rest and taste the cake that the poet made, ladies?” I said. “That’s nice,” they said, rolling into the tent. I served them with coffee and cake. “Is this surely the poet’s cake? It looks like baker’s cake,” one girl said. “Mr. Poet assured me it was of his own making,” I replied in cool reserve. After they left, I scrutinised the cake. Oya! A little bakery mark was seen. “Mighty liar!” I grumbled. Abrupt clouds clouded the sun. The winds scolded bitterly. I decided there was no business remaining. I called Mr. Heine and uncle into the Bishops’ Rest. “Your cake was fine, Mr. Poet.” “I know it, Miss Morning Glory. I’m a pretty good cook, you see. I cooked once in a Sierra camp for fifty miners. I was paid twenty dollars a week. Alas! It was the biggest money I ever earned.” “By the way, Mr. Heine, the bakery sent a bill for you.” I placed before him a slip that I had prepared for the purpose. “Ha! Ha, ha, ha!” His open laughter was as from a simple Faun. I noticed, afterward, a black mass heaped in a ditch. The whole situation grew plain to me. He couldn’t bake, but only burn, in the oven, and had despatched his neighbour for the cake. Dear Poet! 26th—We pressed the poet to receive some money as just a sign of our gratitude. Mr. Heine despised our thought. Honourable gentleman! I found a tin box. I put the money in—ask me not how much! I dug a hole by the willow tree beside the lily pond, and buried the money box. I tumbled a stone over it to mark it. “I’ll write him about it from New York. See, Uncle! Isn’t it unique?” I said. Uncle wasn’t enthusiastic in approving my idea. He couldn’t check me, however, as the money was mine. He said he would order an elegant vase from Tokio. 27th—I intended to keep a sweet fashion of old Japan in presenting a poem at my sayonara.