TEI BUYS A DOLL

"A whole year of months is a very long time, is it not, UmÉ?"

"Yes, Tei."

"Would you like to stay shut up in a dark room as long as that, the way the dolls do?"

"No indeed, Tei, and I would not stay shut up. I would find some way out and would run away."

"Just as we did on your birthday," said Tei.

"Oh, Tei, why did you speak of that? I had put that unworthy memory away in a dark place with all my other bad deeds and was never going to think of it again."

"Just as we put away the dolls in the godown after the Dolls' Festival is over, UmÉ?"

UmÉ laughed. "I had not thought of that, but it is so," she said.

All the time the two little girls were talking they were busily preparing breakfasts for their dolls. They had five or six small trays and on each one they placed chopsticks and bowls, and cups about as big as thimbles.

The room in which they were playing was the honorable guest room, the best one in the Utsuki house. On one side of the room was a sight to make any little girl jump for joy. As many as five long shelves had been placed along the wall, arranged one above another like steps, and more than one hundred dolls were grouped on the shelves.

"Here are dolls of all honorable sizes! Ten sen for each, and all honorable prices!" chanted UmÉ, just as she had heard the toy-peddler cry.

There were indeed dolls of all sizes and kinds. There were big dolls and little dolls, boy dolls and girl dolls. Some were over a hundred years old, and others looked quite new.

On the top shelf stood five emperors with their empresses, and on the lowest shelf, among the toys, Haru was standing beside a new doll which UmÉ's mother had given her for this Dolls' Festival.

This festival, on the third day of the third month, is the most important one of the whole year to little Japanese girls. For nearly a week UmÉ and her mother had been busy preparing for this festival. They had set the shelves in place, covered them with gorgeous red cotton crÊpe, and had then brought boxes and boxes and bags and bags of dolls and toys from the godown.

The godown is the fireproof building which may be seen in almost every Japanese garden. It is built of brick or stone, usually painted white, and has a black tiled roof and a heavy door which is always shut and locked. If the family is a very wealthy one, with a great many treasures, the godown must be large; if there are but few treasures the building may be smaller.

It is quite necessary to have some such place, which cannot easily be destroyed, because Japan is so often visited by earthquakes, and in the cities there are often terrible fires. Perhaps this explains why the Japanese have so little furniture and so few ornaments in their houses.

"I hope that there will not be a fire or an earthquake while the dolls are in the house," said UmÉ, standing off to see if there were a pair of chopsticks on each tray.

"How many dolls are there on the shelves?" asked Tei.

"I don't know," answered UmÉ. "There are all of mine and my mother's and my mother's mother's. And again there are some of her mother's mother's. And besides that there are some of her mother's mother's, and so on, and so on,--to the time of Confucius."

"That can't be quite true, UmÉ," said Tei, who was always very exact in her statements. "Confucius lived many hundred years ago, and I don't think there is a doll in all Japan as old as that."

"I said, 'and so on and so on,'" said UmÉ. "If you keep on you must get to Confucius some time." She filled the little dishes with rice-cakes for the dolls' breakfasts while she talked, and Tei poured tea into the tiny cups.

"Oh, UmÉ, when your words once make an honorable beginning they always have trouble in finding an end."

"Oh, Tei, sometimes it might be well if your own words were sooner to find an honorable end."

Tei laughed and changed the subject. "I have heard," she said, "that there is a country where the little girls do not have a Dolls' Festival."

"Yes," answered UmÉ, "I also have heard as much, and that they sometimes give away their dolls when they are too old to play with them."

"Give them away! Give the dear dolls away!" cried Tei, fairly choking with horror.

"Yes, but perhaps they do not respect them as much as we do," said UmÉ, as she placed a breakfast tray before an emperor and empress on their throne.

"There must be some reason for it," said Tei. "Of course they cannot have a Dolls' Festival if they do not keep their dolls. But still there is no need to keep the dolls if they never have a festival."

The two children stood back and looked at the shelves. On the step below the emperors knelt the court musicians, some playing on the koto, some on the samisen, and others beating tiny drums. There were also many court ladies, dressed in lovely silks and crÊpes, their black hair fastened with jeweled hairpins.

"Are they not beautiful?" asked Tei, clasping her hands.

UmÉ looked tenderly at the lower shelves, where the more common dolls and toys were placed. "These are like the people we see every day, and I love them," she told Tei; "but when I look at the emperor dolls it makes me think of our own beloved Emperor, and I would give up all my toys for him."

"Yes," said Tei, "I would give my life for him."

At that moment she caught sight of a baby doll tied to the back of its nurse, and it reminded her of something very pleasant.

"I held my new baby brother in my arms this morning," she said.

"I am glad of the honorable baby," said UmÉ, "because now you are permitted to share the Festival of the Dolls with me."

"Yes," added Tei, "and I am also permitted to go to the shops to-day and buy a new doll. See all the sen the august father gave me this morning," and Tei took a handful of coins from her sleeve pocket.

UmÉ clapped her hands. "We will go as soon as all the dolls have had their breakfast," she said. "I will strap Haru on my back, and you shall strap your new doll on your back, and we will play that they are truly babies."

She sprang to her feet as she said it, and danced up and down the room, clapping her hands and singing a queer little tune.

"I have the most honorably best time in the whole year when the Dolls' Festival comes," she cried.

It was not to be wondered at. Then all the dolls and toys and games that little girls love to play with are set out on the shelves in the honorable guest room; and for three days they have a holiday from school and play all the day long.

The doll-shops are always merry with children waiting to buy dolls and crowded with dolls waiting to be bought. But there were so many interesting things to see in the streets that Tei and UmÉ were a long time in reaching the doll-shop.

Once they stopped to watch the firemen who ran past them on their way to a fire.

The fire-stations in Tokio are tall ladders which are made to stand upright in the street, with a tub at the top in which the watchman sits. This tub looks like a crow's-nest on the mast of a vessel. Beside it is a big bell which the watchman strikes when he sees a fire anywhere.

The firemen run through the streets headed by a man carrying a large paper standard, which they place near the burning house. They are very helpful in saving the women and children, but as they dislike to desert their standard they are not always of much use in putting out the fire.

House-owners give the firemen a great many presents to keep them faithful to their duty.

As the two little girls watched the men running to the fire with a little box of a hand-engine, and with the beautiful standard in the lead, they thought it a fine sight.

"Tara says he is going to be a fireman when he grows up," said UmÉ. "He says it is because a fireman gets so many presents."

Tei shook her head. "It is a sad thing when a fire burns a thousand houses as it did in our city last year," she said. "I do not like to think of it."

"We need have no fear," said UmÉ lightly. "Our fathers have extra houses packed away in their godowns."

"That is true," said Tei, "but many others are not so wisely fortunate."

Just then they reached the doll-shop and the fires were forgotten.

"Oh, the lovely dolls!" cried UmÉ clapping her hands.

There were a hundred bright kimono sleeves pushing and reaching toward the shelves of dolls in the shop. There were fifty little Japanese girls chattering together about the smiling face of one and the beautiful silk kimono of another.

The click of wooden clogs, the clank of Japanese money, and the merry talk of the children, all trying to be heard at the same time, made it a jolly affair.

The doll chosen by Tei was the one which was being admired by two other little girls at the same moment. It was a boy baby with pink cheeks and black eyes and a little fringe of very black hair; and it was dressed in a lovely red silk kimono covered with yellow chrysanthemums.

"It is very like the new brother at home," said Tei, as she counted out the sen and gave them to the doll-shopman.

Then she strapped the doll on her back and the two little girls went home slowly, talking of the wonderful baby brother who had come to Tei's house the week before.

"The house has to be very quiet, because the honorable baby is not yet well," said Tei. "He has been very ill. I could not have gone with you to the city streets on your birthday if the baby had been well. Every one was glad to have me out of the house, so that it might be kept very still."