Binding the whole was a narrow porch, showing a floor polished like a
mirror from the slipping and sliding of generations of feet. Yuki Chan
first learned to know her face in its reflections and, alas! by the
same method had learned the saucy fascination of sticking out her
small pink tongue.

On the side of the porch toward the plum-tree the child found her
father and mother waiting. The two old people sat on gay cushions with
hands folded and feet crossed. Their festal attire bore the marks of a
once careless luxury, but now shabbiness tried to hide itself under
the bravery of tinsel, where once had been pure gold.

Each year the struggle of obsolete methods of business and the
intricacies of progress plowed the furrows a little deeper in the
man's face, and when his eyes, that in youth had blazed with ambition,
grew wistful and troubled, he dropped them that his wife might not
see.

But what silence could hide from this frail woman any mood of the man
she had served with mind and body and soul these many years? When she
came to him as a shy bride on trial, she knew no such word as love.
Duty was her entire vocabulary, and she asked nothing and gave all.

Many little souls had come to her, with hands all crimped and pink,
like new-blown cherry-leaves, only to close their eyes and pass out to
the good god Jizo, who is always waiting to help little children
across the river of death.

In years gone by, night after night sleep had flown before the terror
that another woman would be brought into the house that the family