With cordial country manners, the servants had come out to the big wooden gateway, and as our jinrikishas rolled between the two lines of bowing figures, I caught murmurs of the familiar, old-fashioned greeting, “O kaeri asobase!”—“Your return is welcome!”
The quiet house seemed very restful after our long, jolting ride, and the hot bath which is always ready in old-fashioned Japan for the expected visitor refreshed us wonderfully. The children and I had just returned to the living room, where, settling ourselves comfortably on soft cushions, we were gazing across the porch straight out into the blue sky, for the valley and the world were far below us, when two maids appeared bringing in the dainty little tables for luncheon.
“You’ll have to do without meat up here,” said Sister apologetically, as she came hurrying in. “We have only chickens and vegetables from my farm, and fish from the mountain streams. We cannot get meat or bread.”
“That matters nothing,” I replied. “The children are fond of fish and rice; and you know that I always liked everything green that grows. Don’t you remember the ‘white cow’?”
Sister laughed; and Hanano, always on the alert for a story, asked, “What is it about a white cow?”
So, as we ate, Sister told a story of my childhood which dated back so far that my knowledge of it was only what others told me.
“Your mother was not a very strong child,” she began, “yet she was never really sick, either. At that time many of the Nagaoka people, when they were puzzled and helpless about a really serious matter, used to consult the priestess of a small Shinto shrine just outside the town; and Honourable Grandmother asked Father to send for the holy woman. For two days before she came, Etsu-bo was not allowed to eat whale-meat soup, or onion, or any
