Part 13 (1/2)
”He does love me!”
”I know that much.”
”But he does not know it--yet.”
They laughed again.
”It WAS for _his_ happiness!”
”Certainly!”
”Not mine!”
”No!”
”He shall be told that he loves me!”
She shook her fist at her favorite deity, sitting unruffled in her shrine.
”Benten! You shall let him know!”
”The G.o.ddess is too decorous for that,” chided the maid. ”The only woman who tells a man that she loves him--”
”Is me!” cried her mistress to the shocked maid.
”Aie!” wailed the maid. ”There is a kind of woman who does that, but she is not the lady Hos.h.i.+--”
”Oh, silence!” laughed the girl. ”It would not take me a moment to tell him, if it were not for what he might think! And, perhaps, he is not wise and will not know enough wisdom to think that!”
”All men think that!” said Isonna.
”But, how can they,” argued Hos.h.i.+ko, ”if they are not taught? How can he if I do not teach him?”
”It is born in them!”
”But how do you know?”
”I have studied,” said the maid.
”Well, at all events, it was not that for which I pet.i.tioned the G.o.ddess: to tell him--that I loved him, you ignorant little animal. I asked her to tell him that he loved me!”
”Oh!” cried the maid, kowtowing. ”I misunderstood.”
”Now go to bed, you little scandal-monger!”
Isonna started. Her mistress recalled her.