a great show of cordiality, to make up for her crimson face and mouth still unsteady with laughter. They conducted the Japanese girl to her room and turned on the lights. There were two new-looking American trunks in the room and two cases covered with matting and inscribed with mystic Japanese hieroglyphics. Wired to the cord wrapping was an express tag with "Miss O. Sen, Queen's Cottage, Wellington," written across it in plain handwriting.
"Oh," exclaimed Miss Otoyo, clasping her hands with timid pleasure, "my estates have unto this place arriving come."
Nance turned and rushed from the room and Molly opened the closet door.
"You can hang all your things in here," she said unsteadily, "and of course lay some of them in the bureau drawers. Better unpack to-night, because to-morrow will be a busy day for you. It's the opening day, you know. If we can help you, don't hesitate to ask."
"I am with gratitude much filled up," said the little Japanese, making a low, ceremonious bow.
"Don't mention it," replied Molly, hastening back to her room.
She found Nance giving vent to noiseless laughter in the Morris chair. Tears were rolling down her cheeks and her face was purple with suppressed amusement. Molly often said that, when Nance did laugh, she was like the pig who died in clover. When he died, he died all over. When Nance succumbed to laughter, her entire being was given over to merriment.
"Wasn't it beautiful?" she exclaimed in a low voice. "Did you ever imagine such ludicrous English? It was all participles. How do you suppose she ever made the entrance examinations?"
"Oh, she's probably good enough at writing. It's just speaking that stumps her. But wasn't she killingly funny? When she said 'my estates have unto this place arriving come,' I thought I should have to departing go along with you. But it would have been rude beyond words. What a dear little thing she is! I think I'll go over later and see how she is. America must be polite to her visitors."
But Japan, always beforehand in ceremonious politeness, was again ahead of America in this respect. Just before ten o'clock the mouse's tail once more brushed their door and Nance's sharp ears catching the faint sound, she called, "Come in."
Miss Otoyo Sen entered, this time less timidly, but with the same deprecating smile on her diminutive face.
"Begging honorable pardon of beautiful young ladies," she began, "will condescendingly to accept unworthy gift from Otoyo in gratitude of favors receiving?"
Then she produced a beautiful Japanese scroll at least four feet in length. In the background loomed up the snow-capped peak of the ever-present sacred mountain, Fujiyama, and the foreground disclosed a pleasing combination of sky-blue waters dotted with picturesque little islands connected with graceful curving bridges, and here and there were cherry trees aglow with delicate pink blossoms.
"Oh, how perfectly sweet," exclaimed the girls, delighted.
"And just the place on this bare wall space!" continued Molly. "It's really a heaven-sent gift, Miss Sen, because we were wishing for something really beautiful to hang over that divan. But aren't you robbing yourself?"
"No, no. I beg you assurance. Otoyo have many suchly. It is nothing. Beautiful young ladies do honor by accepting humbly gift."
"Let's hang it at once," suggested Molly, "while the step ladder is yet with us. Queen's step ladder is so much in demand that it's very much like the snowfall in the river, 'a moment there, then gone forever.'"
The two girls moved the homely but coveted ladder across the room, and, with much careful shifting and after several suggestions timidly made by Otoyo, finally hung up the scroll. It really glorified the whole room and made a framed lithograph of a tea-drinking lady in a boudoir costume and a kitten that trifled with a ball of yarn on the floor, Nance's possession, appear so commonplace that she shamefacedly removed it from its tack and put it back in her trunk, to Molly's secret relief.
"Won't you sit down and talk to us a few minutes?" asked Nance. "We still have a quarter of an hour before bed time."
Otoyo timidly took a seat on a corner of one of the divans. The girls could not help noticing another small package which she had not yet proffered for their acceptance. But she now placed it in Nance's hand.
"A little of what American lady call 'meat-sweet,'" she said apologetically. "It all way from Japan have coming. Will beautiful ladies accept so humbly gift?"
The box contained candied ginger and was much appreciated by young American ladies, the humble giver of this delightful confection being far too shy to eat any of it herself.
By dint of some questioning, it came out that Otoyo's father was a merchant of Tokio. She had been sent to an American school in Japan for two years and had also studied under an English governess. She could read English perfectly and, strange to say, could write it fairly accurately, but, when it came to speaking it, she clung to her early participial-adverbial faults, although she trusted to overcome them in a very little while. She had several conditions to work off before Thanksgiving, but she was cheerful and her ambition was to be "beautiful American young lady."
She was, indeed, the most charming little doll-like creature the girls had ever seen, so unreal and different from themselves, that they could hardly credit her with the feelings and sensibilities of a human being. So correctly polite was she with such formal, stiff little manners that she seemed almost an automaton wound up to bow and nod at the proper moment. But Otoyo Sen was a creature of feeling, as they were to find out before very long.
"Did many girls come down on the train with you to-night, Miss Sen?" asked Nance, by way of making conversation.
Several young ladies had come, Miss Sen replied in her best participial manner. All had been kind to Otoyo but one, who had frightened poor Japanese very, very much. One very kind American gentleman had been commissioned to bring little Japanese down from big city to University. He had look after her all day and brought her sandwiches. He friend of her father and most, most kindly. He had receiving letters from her honorable father to look after little Japanese girl.
Across the aisle from Otoyo had sat a "beeg young American lady, beeg as kindly young lady there with peenk hair," indicating Molly. The "beeg" young American lady, it seems, had great "beeg" eyes, so: Otoyo made two circles with her thumbs and forefingers to indicate size of young American lady's optics. She called Otoyo "Yum-Yum" and she made to laugh at humble Japanese girl, but Otoyo could see that young American lady with beeg eyes feeling great anger toward little strange girl.
"But for what reason?" asked Molly, slipping her arm around Otoyo's plump waist. "How could she be unkind to sweet little Japanese stranger?"
"Young great-eyed lady laugh at me mostly and I very uncomfortably." She brought out the big word with proud effort.
"But how cruel! Why did she do it?" exclaimed Nance.
Here Otoyo gave a delicious melodious laugh for the first time that evening.
"She not like kindly gentlemanly friend to be attentionly to humble Japanese."
"What was the gentleman's name, Otoyo?" asked Molly; and somewhat to her surprise Otoyo, who, as they were to learn later, never forgot a name, came out patly with:
"Professor Edwin Green, kindly friend of honorable father."
"Did the young lady call him 'Cousin'?" asked Nance in the tone of one who knows what the answer will be beforehand.
"Yes," answered Otoyo Sen.
"The
