ZURA


Just below "The House of the Misty Star," in an old temple, a priest
played a merry tattoo on a mighty gong early every morning. First one
stroke and a pause, then two strokes and a pause, followed by so many
strokes without pause that the sounds merged into one deep mellow tone
reaching from temple to distant hills. It was, so to speak, the rising
bell for the deities in that district and announced to them the
beginning of their day of business.

In years gone by the echo of the music had stirred me only to a drowsy
thankfulness that I was no goddess, happy as I turned for a longer
sleep. The morning after Kishimoto San's visit, long before any sound
disturbed the sleeping gods, from my window I watched the Great Dipper
drop behind the crookedest old pine in the garden and heard the story of
the night-wind as it whispered its secret to the leaves.

Usually my patience was short with people who went mooning around the
house at all hours of the night when they should have been sleeping.
Somehow though, things seemed changed and changing. Coming events were
not casting shadows before them in my home, but thrills. Formerly I had
not even a passing acquaintance with thrills. Now, half a century
behind-time, they were beginning to burst in upon me all at once, as
would a troop of merry friends bent on giving me a surprise party, and
the things they seemed to promise kept me awake half the night. My
restlessness must have penetrated the thin partition of my Japanese
house, for when I went out to breakfast there sat Jane Gray, very small
and pale, but as bright-eyed and perky as a sparrow. It was her first
appearance at the morning meal.