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.

It was not a common thing for the two children to wander away in this manner. They had so many playthings and so much room in the two gardens that they were quite contented to play together at home all day long after they had finished their house duties and the lessons at school were over.

Today the children were to have a holiday; and while UmÉ's mother thought she was at Tei's house, Tei's mother thought her little daughter was at her cousin UmÉ's.

It was the middle of the afternoon before the two little girls returned home. They went first to the street of toy-shops and UmÉ bought a big red ball and a fairy-story book full of the most delightful pictures.

Then they sat down on the temple steps to look at the pictures, and would have read the story, too, but in a moment a man came down the street with a crowd of merry children following him. He stopped in front of UmÉ and quickly made five or six butterflies out of pieces of colored paper he took from his sleeve pocket.

The man blew the butterflies up into the air and kept them flying about by waving a big fan. At last he made a beautiful yellow one light on Tei's hair.

"Keep it," said UmÉ, "it will bring good luck," and she gave the man a rin for it.

At one of the booths near the temple she bought two baked sweet potatoes and some rice-cakes, and the little girls ate their luncheon, holding the crumbs for the pigeons that flew down to eat from their outstretched hands.

Now the sen were all spent; but there were still many pleasant things for the two little girls to do. They ran down to the pond in the temple garden to look at the goldfish. Then they played a game with the new ball, and watched a group of boys playing marbles. They even played blind-man's-buff with some of the other children, and were really very happy.

Perhaps they would not have thought to go home at all if UmÉ had not remembered the tea-party in honor of her birthday. Her father was to come home from his shop earlier than usual, so that the family might drink tea together.

"Come, Tei," she said at last, "it is nearly the hour of tea-drinking. Let us go home."

Obedient Tei turned at once, saying only, "It would have been good to read the fairy story in the picture-book."

But UmÉ had not heard what Tei said. For the first time in many hours she was thinking of the koto practice.

"Did you ever do anything disobedient, Tei?" she asked.

Tei thought very hard for a few moments. "Yes," she said at last, "I once put the cherry blossoms into the chrysanthemum vase when the honorable mother told me not to do so."

UmÉ looked at Tei in surprise. "But how could you?" she asked. "They must have hurt your intelligent eyes after you put them there."

Tei shook her head. "I thought they looked pretty," she confessed.

UmÉ looked doubtful. After a moment she said, "I could never have put them in that vase; it would have looked wrong from the first. But I ran away from my koto practice to-day, perhaps that was just as bad."

It was Tei's turn to look surprised. "How could you do it?" she asked in horror. "All the gods will talk about you."

UmÉ shook her head. "It was not hard to do it," she said, "and it is true that I have not thought about it in this whole beautiful day. I do not understand why."

"It is because there have been so many other things to think about," said Tei; but she went home and told her mother that she thought UmÉ would feel the displeasure of the gods because of her disobedience.

As for UmÉ, she said nothing about it at first. Her father was at home and the little girl slipped out of her clogs and into the room like a gay butterfly.

"I have returned, honorable Father," she said, fluttering to her knees and spreading her kimono sleeves as widely as they would go above her head. At the same time she bobbed the saucy little head upon a mat. Once would have been quite enough, but UmÉ did it several times.

"That will do," said her father at last.

He saw that the child was excited. UmÉ's grandmother saw it also and spoke reprovingly. "Little girls should never behave in a way to draw the honorable eyes of their parents upon them in displeasure," she said.

But UmÉ had discovered the tray of gifts standing on the floor. There were several packages, each neatly wrapped in white paper with a bit of writing on it, and tied with red and white paper ribbons.

Before she touched them UmÉ made a deep bow before her grandmother, saying, "Truly, thanks!" Then to her father she said, "O Chichi San, have I your generous permission to open the packages?"

The permission was given and happy little UmÉ knelt on the floor beside the tray and opened one package after another. From every one she took first a tiny piece of dried fish wrapped in colored paper, which is nearly always given with a present in Japan.

"These are for good luck," she said, and placed the bits of fish carefully in a little lacquered box.

Of course there was the envelope of paper handkerchiefs from her grandmother. There was also a beautiful new kimono from her mother, and from her father there was a hairpin with white plum blossoms for ornament.

Tara gave her a doll dressed in a kimono like her own new one. "I kept it in the godown for a whole week of days," he told her.

"Yes," said the mother softly, "and it was not very hard to make such a small kimono secretly."

"I shall call her Haru," said UmÉ, "because she has come to me in the first days of the honorable springtime."

"On the day that I brought the hairpin home and hid it in your mother's sleeve," said her father with a smile, "I felt deeply deceitful."

Suddenly UmÉ felt very unhappy. She looked at all the loving faces and remembered that she, too, had this very day been most deceitful.

"Now let us look at UmÉ's plum tree," said the grandmother.

All the family rose from the floor and followed the good father into the garden. Yuki San toddled along on her wooden clogs, and behind the baby marched tailless Tama, keeping a sharp eye on the baby's hands. Tama did not like the feeling of those little hands.

They stopped under the plum tree and the father pointed to the branches. UmÉ looked, and the sight of the tree sent the blood into her face and then out of it. The buds all over the branches were shyly shaking out their white petals.

UmÉ heard her father say, "We must now write fitting poems and fasten them to the heavenly-blossoming branches." She saw all the family go back into the house for the brushes, ink and slips of paper, but she remained under the tree. She was too unhappy to make poems, and she felt sure that no thought of hers could be pleasing to the gods at this time.

"Benten Sama heard my prayer," she whispered; "and while I was disobedient, the plum tree has blossomed."

In a few moments her mother returned to the garden.

"Condescend to hear my unworthy poem," she said, and read it aloud from a slip of paper. "The illustrious sun called to the brown buds and the blossoms obeyed."

UmÉ hung her head. She only, it seemed, had been disobedient; even the buds had obeyed the call of the sun.

Just then Tara ran from the house. "My miserable poem is about the lovely sunset," he said, and read, "The joyful blossoms blush under the rosy glances of the sunset sky."

The father took the poems and fastened them to a branch of the tree. As he did so he looked down at his little daughter. "What unhappy thought clouds your face, UmÉ-ko?" he asked gently.

UmÉ began to cry. It was a long time since she had done such a thing. Little Japanese children are always taught not to permit their faces to show either grief or anger; but UmÉ's tears fell in spite of all her efforts to keep them back.

At the sight of her tears a silence fell upon the whole family. Even little Yuki looked at her in surprise as she told the story of her disobedience.

It was the grandmother who spoke first.

"Our spirits are poisoned that you have been so forgetful of our teaching," she said; "but I have learned many things in my long life. It is our honorable privilege to forgive your disobedience, if you are truly sorry for it, because this is your birthday."

Little UmÉ counted that forgiveness as the best of all her birthday gifts.