incense.

'Tomorrow,' Akira says, 'she will decorate this, and make the offerings
of food to the little one.'

Hanging from the ceiling, on the opposite side of the room, and in front
of the shrine, is a wonderful, charming, funny, white-and-rosy mask--
the face of a laughing, chubby girl with two mysterious spots upon her
forehead, the face of Otafuku. [2] It twirls round and round in the
soft air-current coming through the open shoji; and every time those
funny black eyes, half shut with laughter, look at me, I cannot help
smiling. And hanging still higher, I see little Shinto emblems of paper
(gohei), a miniature mitre-shaped cap in likeness of those worn in the
sacred dances, a pasteboard emblem of the magic gem (Nio-i hojiu) which
the gods bear in their hands, a small Japanese doll, and a little wind-
wheel which will spin around with the least puff of air, and other
indescribable toys, mostly symbolic, such as are sold on festal days in
the courts of the temples--the playthings of the dead child.

'Komban!' exclaims a very gentle voice behind us. The mother is standing
there, smiling as if pleased at the stranger's interest in her butsuma--
a middle-aged woman of the poorest class, not comely, but with a most
kindly face. We return her evening greeting; and while I sit down upon
the little mat laid before the hibachi, Akira whispers something to her,
with the result that a small kettle is at once set to boil over a very
small charcoal furnace. We are probably going to have some tea.

As Akira takes his seat before me, on the other side of the hibachi, I
ask him: