If ever there is a time and place when enticing red shoes can be forgotten, it is New Year's time among the shops in Japan. No one ever thinks of staying indoors then, else he would miss the gayest, liveliest, brightest time of the whole year. The shop-keepers have to fill their shelves with great quantities of new things to match the New Year; there are new games, new kimonos, new clogs, new toys for sale everywhere, and even the story-tellers brighten up their old stories to make them seem like new. That last day before the New Year was a very busy one in the Utsuki household. There were gifts to be put into dainty packages, the pine-tree arch to be decorated, the last stitches to be taken in the new kimonos, and the last bills to be paid--even the smallest one that might possibly have been overlooked. There is a beautiful custom in Japan of beginning the year without a debt. Every bill is paid and no one owes a single sen when the old year dies and the new year dawns. When at last Umé said her honorable good-night to her father and mother and went to her wooden pillow she was very tired. As she crept under the warm coverlet she whispered drowsily, "May Benten Sama, or Kwannon, or one of the illustrious goddesses give me what I have prayed for so long." Then she fell fast asleep. CHAPTER XV NEW YEAR'S DAY "So many honorable sounds!" murmured Umé drowsily, and she listened for a moment without opening her eyes. It was New Year's morning, so early that the sun was only just rising. Umé could hear the clapping of many hands outside the house. "I, myself, meant to welcome the illustrious sun with the hand-joy," she said to herself, and sprang from her bed with wide-open eyes. It took but a moment to slip into a thick kimono and push open the shoji. Someone had already opened the wooden shutters and Umé reached the corner of the street in time to see the round red sun send his first beams over the snow-covered roofs. She clapped her hands joyously and bowed a welcoming "Ohayo" to the great ball of light. "Now I shall surely begin the year with good luck!" she said to herself as she slipped back into the house. She closed the shoji and cuddled again between the soft quilts for warmth. Then it occurred to her to wonder why she had not seen her mother, who always rose very early, among the group that was greeting the New Year sun. The air was filled with the sound of joy bells which were ringing from all the temples. One hundred and eight strokes must they ring, twelve times nine, to keep all evil spirits away from the city in this new year. But there were other sounds which came from within the house. Was it,--yes, it surely was the sound of a little new baby's cry. Again Umé was out of bed and pattering across the room to open her shoji. Her father was standing before the alcove in the honorable guest room, and he read the question in her face before Umé could ask it.