Tara laughed. He was very fond of his little sister. That she should do such an unheard-of thing as to demand cakes from her father seemed to him exceedingly funny. His father smiled, too. "Your grandmother will have a task to teach you what is proper, Yuki San," he said. At last the breakfast of rice, tea and raw fish was over. The little lacquer trays were all taken out of the room, and the father was ready to go to his silk shop. His jinrikisha was waiting at the garden gate. In their place on the flat stone at the house entrance stood his wooden clogs, and all the family gathered at the door to bid him "Sayonara." CHAPTER II UMÉ'S BIRTHDAY Umé stood still, looking after her father until his jinrikisha was out of sight. Down in her heart there was an uneasy feeling that she was going to do wrong. She had resolved to omit her koto practice, and having made such a resolve it seemed to her as binding as a promise. But now was the time she had always given to her practice; now, when her mother was busy with household cares. "I will go first to cousin Tei's," she said to herself, and ran to her grandmother's room to find her mother. "O Haha San," she said, "may I have your honorable permission to go to cousin Tei's house?" "Yes, Daughter," answered her mother, and went on matching the silk pieces of the grandmother's new kimono. Umé stepped down from the veranda into the garden path; then she stopped and looked back into the room where her koto lay. Something within her told her to go back. It was the strong sense of obedience to duty which makes such a large part of the life of every Japanese girl. She felt it so strongly that she took one step backward. Then the resolve made in the early morning, when she was disappointed at not seeing the plum blossoms, flashed into her memory. She slipped her feet into her wooden clogs, turned toward the garden and clattered swiftly down the path. All the flowering shrubs were still wrapped in their winter kimonos of straw and it seemed to Umé that they knew about her disobedience. The cherry trees and the dwarf pine trees waved their branches backward toward the house. She passed the little hill, the pond with its bridge, and the stone lantern, and she remembered that one day her father had told her that they all stood for obedience. But she ran forward, shaking her naughty little head as if to shake away every good influence. At the farther end of the garden a tiny gateway led into her cousin Tei's garden, through which she ran to the house. Tei was standing on the veranda bouncing a ball. "Come, Tei," said Umé. "Let us go to the street of shops and buy some sweets. It is my birthday and I have ten sen." Tei was so much in the habit of obeying that she obeyed Umé, and the two little girls went into the city streets, where they found so many things to interest them that Umé quite forgot her koto practice.