"Honorable thanks," responded Haru, "but my father awaits my unworthy return. _Domo! Aka-San des'ka?_ So this is Miss Baby! Ishikichi will have a new comrade in this little sister." "Poison not your serene mind with contemplation of my uncomely last-sent one!" said the woman, pridefully tilting the pillow so as to show the tiny, vacuous face. "Are not its hands degradedly well-formed?" "Wonderfully beyond saying! The father is still exaltedly ill?" "It is indeed so! I have not failed to sprinkle the holy water over Jizo, nor to present the straw sandals to the Guardians-of-the-Gate. Also I have rubbed each day the breast of the health-god; yet O-Binzuru does not harken. Doubtless it is because of some sin committed by my husband in a previous existence! I have not knowledge of your Christian God, or I would make my worthless sacrifices also to Him." "He heals the sick," said Haru, "but He augustly loves not sacrifice--as He exaltedly did in olden time," she hastily supplemented, recalling certain readings from the Old Testament. "The gods of Nippon divinely change not their habit," returned the woman. "Also my vile intellect can not comprehend why the foreigners' God should illustriously concern Himself with the things of another land." "The Christian Divinity," said Haru, "is a God of all lands and all peoples." The other mused. "It passes in my degraded mind that He, then, would lack a sublime all-sympathy for our Kingdom-of-Slender-Swords. You are transcendently young, _Ojo-San_, but I am thirty-two, and I hold by the gods of my ancestors." "Honorably present my greetings to your husband," Haru said, as she bowed her adieu. "May his exalted person soon attain divine health! To-morrow I will send another book for him to read." The woman watched her go, with a smile on her tired face--the Japanese smile that covers so many things. She looked at the baby's face on the pillow. "Praise _Shaka_," she said aloud, "there is millet yet for another week. Then we must give up the shop. Well--I can play the _samisen_, and the gods are not dead!" Behind her a diminutive figure had lifted himself upright from a _f'ton_. He came forward from the gloom, his single sleeping-robe trailing comically and his great black eyes round and serious. "Why must we give up the shop, honorable mother?" "Go to sleep, Ishikichi," said his mother. "Trouble me not so late with your rude prattle." "But why, _Okka-San_?" "Because rent-money exists not, small pigeon," she answered gently. "So long as we have ignobly lived here, we have paid the _banto_ who brings his joy-giving presence on the first of each month. Now we have no more money and can not pay." "Why have we no more money?" "Because the honorable father is sick and you are too small to earn. But let it not trouble your heart, for the gods are good. See--we have almost waked the _Aka-San_!"