Umé's ten years had been spent in learning the hard lesson of bearing disappointments cheerfully. Now, with the shadow of tears filling her eyes, she tried to bring the shadow of a smile to her tiny mouth. "Benten Sama did not honorably please to open the buds," she whispered with a sob. Then, standing on the frosty ground, with her bare toes numb from the cold, Umé made a rebellious little resolve deep in her heart where she thought Benten Sama would know nothing about it. She resolved not to practise on her koto at all after breakfast. There were two reasons for making the resolve so secretly. She might wish to pray to Benten Sama again some time, although if the goddess were not going to answer her prayers it did not seem at all likely; and besides, it was being very disobedient, because it was the rule that she must practise one-half hour every morning after breakfast. Suddenly she realized that her disobedience would hurt her mother, who was not at all to blame because the plum tree had not blossomed; but just as her resolution began to weaken, her mother came out upon the veranda and called to her. "The plum branch which your august father brought home only a week ago is full of blossoms," she said, as she led the child back into the house. It was true. In a beautiful vase on the floor of the honorable alcove stood a spray of white plum blossoms. Umé's mother pushed the sliding walls of the room wide open so that the morning sun might shine full upon the flowers. The little girl ran across the matted floor and knelt joyously before them. "They are most honorably welcome!" she cried, and bent her forehead to the floor in salutation. She forgot at once her disappointment in the garden and her resolve not to practise. She touched the sweet blossoms with loving fingers and called her brother to look at the beautiful things. "Come Tara San! Come and look at the eldest brother of a hundred flowers!" she called. Not only Tara, her brother, but Yuki, her baby sister, also came to bend over the blossoms in delight. The spray stood in a brown jar filled with moist earth; here and there the brown color of the jar was flecked with drifts of white to represent the snow on bare earth, and the branch looked like a tiny tree growing out of the ground. The plum is the first of all the trees to blossom in Japan, and for that reason it is called "eldest brother" to the flowers. While the children touched the blossoms gently and chattered their delight, their mother was busy, waking the servants, sliding back all the wooden shutters of the house, folding the bedding and putting it away in the closets. Umé left her flower-gazing and sprang to her own puffs before her mother could touch them. "I will put them away," she said, and folded them carefully as she had been taught to do. After breakfast they would have to be taken out and aired; but the room must first be put in order for the morning meal.