Chapter 5

It was a long time before June saw Monsieur again, for there were picnics up the river, with lunches cooked on the bank, there were jolly little excursions in sampans, and trips to the tea-houses, and flower shows, and an endless round of good times. Seki San kept June out of doors all day, and watched with glee the color return to his cheeks, and the angles of his slender body turn into soft curves.

At night, she and June and Toro, with Tomi frisking and sneezing at their heels, would join the happy, chattering crowd that thronged the streets, and would make their way to the flower market where tall flaming torches lit up the long stalls of flowers, and where merchants squatting on their heels spread their wares on the ground before them, —curious toys, old swords, and tea-pots with ridiculous long noses. And in front of every door was a great shining paper lantern with queer signs painted on it, and other gay lanterns of all shapes and sizes and colors went dancing and bobbing up and down the streets like a host of giant fireflies.

It was no wonder that June hated to go to bed when so much was happening outside. Only the promise of a story moved him when Seki gave the final word. But for the sake of a story he would have gone to the moon, I believe, and stayed there too.

When at last he was bathed and cuddled down in his nest on the floor with a huge kimono—four times as big as the ones Seki wore—spread over him, Seki would sit on her heels beside him, sewing with an endless thread, which she only cut off from the reel when the seam was finished. And June would watch her pretty, plump little hands, and the shadows of her moving fingers as he listened to queer tales of the sea-gods and their palace under the waves. Sometimes she would tell of the old samurai and their dark deeds of revenge, of attacks on castles, and fights in the moats, and the imaginary clashing of swords and shouts of men would get so real to June that he would say:

“I don’t want any more scareful ones to-night. Please tell me about the little mosquito boy.”

Then Seki would begin: “Very long times ago, lived very good little boy, who never want to do anything but reverence his mother and his father, and his grandfathers and grandmothers. All times he think it over to himself how he can serve his parents. One night the wind blow up from the south and bring a thousand hundred ka, mosquito you call him, and they bite very much. So good little boy takes off all his clothes and lies at the door of his house so mosquitoes bite him and get so full of boy that they have not room more for father and mother.” At which point June would never fail to laugh with delight, and Seki would look hurt and puzzled and say, “Not funny, June, very fine, kind, and noble of good little boy.”

After Seki had put out the light and joined the rest of the family in the garden, June would lie very still and the thoughts that had been crowded down in the bottom of his heart all day would come creeping up and whisper to him. “Mother is a long way off; suppose she has gotten lost and never comes back again. Perhaps I haven’t got a father any more, maybe the soldiers have put him in the ground as they did Teddy’s papa. Suppose I have to live here always and grow up to be a Japanese man, and never see the ranch in California nor my pony any more?” And a big sob would rise in his throat and he was glad of the dark, for the tears would come no matter how hard he tried to keep them back. But he never called Seki, nor let any one know. Sometimes he got up and got his little gun and took it back to bed with him; it was so much easier to be a soldier if you had a gun in your hand.