play with children. Your granddaughter is doubtless lonely and it may
give her pleasure."

The face of my visitor stiffened.

"Pleasure!" he repeated. "Does she not know that a woman's only pleasure
is obedience? Is there not enough of my blood in her to make her bow to
the law? Twice she has told me to attend to my own affairs! Told me! Her
ancestor! Her Master!" This last word he always pronounced with a
capital M.

Kishimoto San was not cruel. Unlike many of his countrymen, who are
educated by modern methods as regarding laws governing women, he was
still an old-time Oriental in the raw.

It was at this uncomfortable moment that the little maid brought in tea.
I instructed her to serve it on the balcony which overlooked sea and
mountain. The appealing beauty of the scene always soothed me as a
lullaby would a restless child. I hoped as much for my disturbed
visitor. I gave him his second cup of tea, and asked him whether the
mother could not control her daughter. It set him going.

"Her mother!" he scoffed. "Madam, if her mother had been blest with the
backbone of a jellyfish she would never have married a man whose people
were not her people, whose customs are as far removed from hers as the
East is from the West. My daughter was young. Had she married one of
her own country, all would have been well. Her will would have been
directed by her mother-in-law. She was trained to obedience. See what
the teachings of your country do to our women! In a letter she wrote
telling me she had gone, she thanked me for teaching her the laws of