Just outside the gateway to the temple, old women sit beside little tables and sell saucers full of food for the fishes in the ponds and the doves that live in the temple eaves. And where one person sells anything many other people also sell something. They sell, the children buy, and the doves and fishes are fed. "It is like the 'House that Jack Built,'" said the American lady. "This is the pond that held the fish, that ate the cakes, that lay in the dish and were sold in the booths with all kinds of toys, from dolls to kites, for girls and boys." [Illustration: The Street of Shops and Asakusa Temple. _Page 91._] It does not take the little street of shops a long time to reach the temple steps, in Asakusa; but it does take the little people a long time to get through the street. Baby Yuki stopped to kotow to the first old woman she saw selling beans. In that moment the toy-peddler and all the children seemed to disappear. The baby looked around for them, and was frightened to find that she was all alone. But before she had time to realize that she was lost, the foreign lady had bought beans from the old woman and poured them into the baby's hands, and the doves were flying down to pick up the beans as she scattered them in the street. From feeding the doves it was but a step to other joys. The lady bought a paper parasol at one of the booths, at another a doll and a Japanese lantern on the end of a slender bamboo stick. She tied the doll to the baby's back, tilted the parasol over her shoulder, gave her the lantern to hold, and took her picture. Then she took the child's hand and they walked along together until they came to an old woman who sat on the ground holding a tray of paper flowers. The lady stopped to buy some of the flowers, and might have gone on buying gifts--for there was no end to the toys for sale in that short street--but the paper flowers had to be opened in a bowl of water. To find the bowl of water the big lady and the little girl had to pass under the temple gate and walk off among the trees and fish-ponds till they came to a tea-house. There they sat down to rest, and a maid brought tea and cakes for them to eat, and a bowl of water for the flowers. There are always picnics going on in the grounds of the temple, especially at chrysanthemum time; but there was never a prettier picnic sight than the one made by Yuki-ko San and her foreign friend as they knelt on the mats, sipping their tea, and watching the tiny paper flowers change into all sorts of shapes. Some of the flowers became beautiful potted plants, about an inch tall. Others changed into trees, or birds, and one even took the shape of Fujiyama, the lofty mountain. They seemed like fairy trees and birds, and not until the last one had opened did Yuki San lift her little face from the bowl of water. Then she spoke for the first time. "Yuki take little birds home to O Chichi San," she said.