IV
TROUBLE MEANING JOY
And after his going, in the whimsical delight they had practised together, she named the baby, when it came, Trouble. Every Japanese baby begins with a temporary name; it may be anything, almost, for the little time. She was quite sure he would like the way she had named him Trouble—meaning joy. That was his own oblique way. As for his permanent name,—he might have several others before,—that was for him to choose when he returned. And this event was to happen, according to his own words, when the robins nested again.
And spring and the robins had come.
All this to explain why Madame Butterfly and her baby were reclining on the immaculate mats in attitudes of artistic abandon, instead of keeping an august state, as all other Japanese mothers and babes were at this moment doing. American women, we are told, assume more fearless attitudes
