LITTLE MISS PLUM BLOSSOM

The little plum tree in the garden had blossomed regularly every year for ten years on the twentieth day of the second month. That day was Plum Blossom's birthday.

On the day that she was born the little plum tree had blossomed for the first time. For that reason she was called UmÉ, which is the Japanese word for "plum blossom"; and for her sake the tree had opened its first blossoms on that same day for the next nine years.

Now, on the day before her eleventh birthday, all the buds were closed hard and fast. UmÉ looked at them just before going to bed and there seemed no chance of their opening for several days.

"Perhaps the weather will be fine to-morrow, UmÉ-ko," said her mother, as she spread a wadded quilt on the floor for her little daughter's bed. "If it is, and the sun shines honorably bright, the buds may open before the hour of sunset."

"I will say a prayer to Benten Sama that it may be so," answered UmÉ. Benten Sama is the Japanese goddess of good fortune, to whom the little girl prayed very often.

She knelt upon the mat and bent down until her forehead touched the floor, after the Japanese manner of making an honorable bow. She clapped her hands softly three times, and then rubbed one little pink palm against the other while she prayed.

"Dear Benten Sama," she said, "grant that just one little spray of the plum blossoms may open to-morrow."

For a moment she was very still, and then she added, "If they are open when I first wake in the morning, I will honorably practise on my koto for one whole hour after breakfast."

Then little UmÉ Utsuki slipped into her bed upon the floor, laid her head on the thin cushion of her wooden pillow, and drew the soft puff under her cunning Japanese chin.

"Good-night, dear Benten Sama," she whispered softly, and fell asleep with the words of an old Japanese song on her drowsy tongue:--

The buds on the plum tree outside were closed hard and fast, and the house walls about UmÉ were also tightly closed. The bright moon in the heavens could find no chink through which to send a cheering ray to little UmÉ San.

All through the night the frost sparkled on the bare twigs of the dwarf trees in the garden. All through the night the plum tree stood still and made no sign that Benten Sama had heard UmÉ's prayer. When the moonbeams grew pale in the morning light the buds were still tightly closed.

UmÉ stirred in her bed on the floor, crept softly to the screen in the wall and pushed it open. She moved the outer shutter also along its groove and stepped off the veranda without even stopping to put on her white stockings or her little wooden clogs.

Down the garden path to the plum tree she pattered as fast as her bare feet could carry her.

Alas, there was nothing to be seen on her plum tree but brown buds!

She looked up into the gray morning sky and tried to think of something else; but her gay little kimono covered a heart that was heavy with disappointment.

The tears tried to force their slow way into her eyes, but the little girl blinked them back again.

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.

UmÉ's bed was made, as are all Japanese beds, by spreading a quilted puff upon the floor. With another puff over her, and a wooden block on which to rest her head, the little girl slept as comfortably as most people sleep on mattresses and soft pillows.

UmÉ laughed softly now as she folded the puffs away in their closet. "There are still many things to make my birthday a happy one," she said to herself. "There will be a game with Cousin Tei after breakfast, and perhaps she will give me a gift." She said the last words in a whisper, so that her mother would not hear. No matter how much she might long for a gift, it was not becoming in her to speak of it beforehand.

She was sure that there would be gifts from her father and mother and from the respected grandmother. That was to be expected, and had even been hinted. The grandmother had mentioned an envelope of paper handkerchiefs the very day before, after UmÉ had made an unusually graceful bow to her.

In her heart UmÉ wanted most a pair of little American shoes, but she had never dared to ask for them because her father did not like the dress of the American women. In fact, he often told UmÉ to observe carefully how much more graceful and attractive the kimono is than the strange clothing worn by the foreign people.

The little girl sighed as she remembered it. Just then she heard her father's step in the next room and turned quickly to bow before him.

The maids had brought several lacquered trays into the room, one for each member of the family, and had set them near together on the floor. Each tray had short legs, three or four inches high, and looked like a toy table. On the tray was placed a pair of chopsticks, a dainty china bowl and a tiny cup. Now one maid was beginning to fill the bowls with boiled rice and another was pouring tea into the cups.

All three children remained standing until the father entered the room. Then each one, even Baby San, bowed before him, kneeling on the floor and touching his forehead to the mat and saying, "Good morning, honorable Father."

To their mother the children bowed in the same way, and also to their grandmother when she came into the room. Everything would have been most quiet and proper but for the baby. She liked to bump her little forehead on the floor so well that she kept on kotowing to old black Tama, the tailless cat, who stalked into the room. As if that were not enough, she bowed to each one of the breakfast trays until her mother seated her before one of them and gave her a pair of tiny chopsticks.

Then there was the waiting until the grandmother and the father and mother were served, which seemed to the baby to take too long a time. She beat the tray with her chopsticks and called for the rice-cakes even as they were disappearing down the honorable throat of her father.

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."