THE DOLLS' FESTIVAL

When UmÉ and Tei reached home, carrying their dolls on their backs, they found Yuki on the veranda.

"My geta! Yuki's geta!" the baby called as soon as she saw her sister coming down the garden path; and she stood on one clog and held up the other little white-stockinged foot.

Small as she was, Yuki-ko could slip her feet into her wooden clogs without any help when she could find them; but SakÉ, the dog, generally found them first and as there was never a bone for him to hide, he liked to hide the tiny shoes.

Now, as usual, one of the clogs was missing from the flat step where the baby had last left it.

"Perhaps it is under the plum tree, O Yuki San," said UmÉ, and ran to find it, but it was not there.

"What a pity that SakÉ makes us so much trouble!" she said to Tei. "It is plain to be seen that the good dog Shiro was no ancestor of his."

"What good dog Shiro?" asked Tei.

"The dog of the man who made the dead trees to blossom," answered UmÉ as she looked under the quince bushes; but the missing clog was not there. Several days later the gardener found it buried under the bush of snow blossoms; but UmÉ gave up looking for it when she did not find it in any of SakÉ's favorite places.

"It is such a long time since I heard the story of the good man who made trees blossom, that I have nearly forgotten it," said Tei; but UmÉ was talking to Yuki.

"Be happy, little treasure-flower," she said to the baby. "You shall have a new pair of clogs; and you may come with us now and help serve tea to the honorable dolls."

Baby Yuki forgot her clogs at once. She knelt upon the floor and held up her tiny hands for the tea-bowl.

"Oh, UmÉ! She is too little to whip the tea," said Tei when she saw that her cousin meant to give the baby a bowl of tea powder and a bamboo brush with which to whip it into foam.

"I will watch her," answered UmÉ. "It may be that the dolls forget all they learn about the tea-ceremony when they are shut up in the godown for a whole year. While I am teaching Yuki San, they may learn it all over again by most carefully watching us."

Tei laughed. "The illustrious dolls always behave most honorably well," she said. "Perhaps it is because they do not forget from year to year, but spend all their time in remembering."

Just then there was a happy little gurgle from the baby.

UmÉ turned quickly to see what she was doing. "O Yuki San! Yuki San!" she cried, running to the rescue.

But it was too late! While UmÉ had been talking with Tei, the baby had been pouring the tea over her head. She was still holding the bowl above her head when UmÉ looked, and the water was still trickling down over her hair and into her eyes.

She smiled sweetly up into UmÉ's face. "The honorable fountain!" she said.

"The Japanese tea-ceremony has nothing to do with the honorable fountain in the garden," said UmÉ as she clapped her hands for old Maru, the nurse.

"Naruhodo!" said old Maru, as she brought towels and wiped the tea from the baby and the mat with many exclamations of amazement.

"Naruhodo!" she repeated, as she watched the two older children try to teach something of the tea-ceremony to the baby.

But Yuki San was soon tired of sitting still. She like to watch the tea powder foam in the bowl, but when she tried to put her tiny hands into the dish and play they were fishes, UmÉ gave her a doll and sent her off to play by herself.

"It will never do for the dolls to see such unworthy actions," UmÉ told Tei. "They will think it is all a part of the august tea-ceremony."

It was much easier to teach the dolls without the baby's help, and there was everything to teach them with. There was a toy kitchen with its charcoal brazier, its brushes and dishes. There was a toy work-box with thread, needles and silk.

There were toy quilts and wooden pillows and flower vases; and there were toy jinrikishas with their runners.

UmÉ and Tei taught the dolls the proper bowings for the street and those for the house. They changed the food on the trays, and taught the girl dolls that they must most carefully wait upon the boy dolls, as UmÉ herself had been taught to wait upon Tara, although she was older than her brother.

UmÉ even read aloud with much emphasis from the "Book of Learning for Women": "Let the children be always taught to speak the simple truth, to stand upright in their proper places, and to listen with respectful attention."

There are many other directions in the book, all of which the little women of Japan learn by heart. UmÉ would have read many of the rules to the dolls, but her mother called both children to leave their play and go with the grandmother and old Maru to listen to story-telling in the street of theaters.

"It is a very different thing to tell the simple truth at one time and to listen to honorable stories at another," said UmÉ to the dolls as she left them.

In the street of theaters are many little booths in which there are men who tell the most enchanting stories. Sometimes they tell fairy stories, sometimes ghost stories, and sometimes stories of Japanese gods and heroes. UmÉ and Tei liked the fairy stories best of all.

"The old man in this booth tells fairy stories faithfully well," said the grandmother as they stopped before a tiny house decorated with paper parasols and lanterns, and with a long red banner floating above it from a bamboo pole.

"Honorably deign to enter," said a little woman crouching at the door.

Maru gave the woman four sen and the little party entered and joined a group of about twenty women and girls who were seated on mats in front of the story-teller.

"Hear, now, the story of the good old man who made dead trees to blossom!" said the story-teller, waving his fan over his head and then clapping it in his hand three times to call attention to his words.

UmÉ and Tei looked at one another and clasped their hands beneath their chins.

"Just what we were respectfully speaking about in the morning hour!" murmured Tei.

UmÉ nodded and would have said something in answer, but her grandmother said, "Hush!"

"Once upon a time two men lived side by side in a little village," said the story-teller, looking at UmÉ. UmÉ again nodded her head. She knew the story perfectly well, but the Japanese children love to hear the same stories told over and over again.

"One of these men was kind and generous," continued the story-teller. "The other was envious and cruel. Neither one of them had any children to pay them honor in their old age; but the kind man and his wife were always doing good. One day they found a dog which they took to their home and taught as they would have taught a child, to be obedient and faithful.

"They named the dog Shiro, and fed him with the mochi cake which tastes best after the New Year is made welcome with much joy and ceremony."

UmÉ and Tei nodded and smiled at one another.

"But Shiro knew nothing about the New Year festival," went on the story-teller. "He was happy all the day long in following the good old man about and getting a kind pat from the gentle hand.

"One day he began digging for himself in a corner of the garden. Scratch! went his two paws as fast as he could make the dirt fly, and the good old man took his spade and dug in the spot to find what could be hidden in the dirt.

"He was rewarded by finding an honorable quantity of coins; enough to keep him and his wife comfortable for many months.

"But the envious man, the unworthy neighbor, hearing of this good fortune, asked to borrow the dog.

"'Yes, truly,' answered the other and sent Shiro home with his neighbor, although the obedient creature had always been driven away from the neighbor's gate with sticks and harsh words.

"'Now you must find treasure for me,' said the bad man who knew nothing about kindness to animals, for he pushed the poor dog's nose into the earth so deeply that Shiro was nearly smothered.

"The dog did truly begin scratching, but when the cruel man dug in that place, he found nothing but rubbish, which so enraged him that he killed the obedient animal and buried his body under a pine tree.

"At last the good man, wondering why Shiro did not return, went to his neighbor and asked the reason. 'Ah, he was a bad dog!' answered the other. 'He would find nothing but rubbish in the ground for me, and so I killed him and he lies under the pine tree.'

"'It was a great pity to kill him,' said the good man. 'We should be kind to all animals, because it may be that the souls of our ancestors return and live in their bodies.'

"'What is done cannot now be helped,' the bad neighbor answered.

"So Shiro's master bought the tree, cut it down and took it home."

UmÉ and Tei nodded again. The mystery was to begin in the story and they drew closer to the grandmother.

"The spirit of the little dog spoke to his master in the night," said the story-teller, "and told him to make a tub from the pieces of the tree. It must be just such a tub as the mochi-makers use at New Year's time, and in the tub the old man must make mochi for Shiro.

"So the good old man did as he was bidden, thinking to put some of the cakes before the tablet on the god-shelf as an offering to the spirit of the obedient dog.

"But when he put the barley into the tub and began to pound it, the quantity of barley increased until there was all that the man and his wife could use for their needs for a long time.

"This also, the envious neighbor saw, and he borrowed the tub as he had borrowed the dog, thinking to have as much barley meal for himself.

"But although the tub overflowed with the grain, it was all worthless; so poor that no one could eat it. A second time the man was angered and he pounded the tub to pieces in his rage.

"The patient old man gathered up the pieces and used them for fire-wood, saving the ashes as the spirit of Shiro directed him to do.

"In his garden there was an old dead tree. The spirit of the dog bade him sprinkle some of the ashes upon the branches of this tree and he obediently did so.

"Immediately, pop! The branches were suddenly covered with beautiful double cherry blossoms.

"People from far and wide flocked to see the sight, and among them was a prince who begged the old man to do the same thing for one of his trees which had long been dead.

"When his tree blossomed as the first had done, he was so pleased that he gave the old man many valuable gifts of silk and rice and sent him home, to be known as the 'old man who could make dead trees blossom.'"

When the story-teller finished, he disappeared behind a red curtain and there was nothing for UmÉ and Tei to do but go home.

"It is a good thing that the story was no longer," said UmÉ, "because Tara is going to help me build a toy garden for my dolls."

Tara helped to build the garden, to be sure, but the two little girls waited upon him and listened to him, and not once forgot that in Japan girls and women must follow their brothers. They must never try to lead them.

"Go and get the spade from the garden-house, UmÉ," Tara said to his sister. "Bring some small stones from the rockery," he told Tei, and both little girls obeyed without a word.

At the end of the third day of the Dolls' Festival there was a charming toy garden at one end of the veranda. In the garden there was a tiny lake bordered with flowering shrubs, a little hill with trees growing around it, a path leading to the lake beside which grew peach trees in full bloom, and there were even two tiny stone lanterns and a little temple on the hill.

It had been a wonderful holiday for the little girls and they were sorry that it was all over, but they cheerfully helped to pack the dolls and toys away in boxes and carry them back to the godown.