Chapter VIII

MARION came flying into the garden, her cheeks aglow, her bright eyes dancing.

“Iris—Blossom!” she called, excitedly.

She could hardly get her breath to tell them the great news. In her hand she waved aloft a sheet of paper.

“What ees’t?” asked Plum Blossom, puzzled.

“A letter,” cried Marion. “Guess who from?”

“Gozo,” both answered at once.

Marion nodded.

“Right,” she said, “and to me!—_me_!” She began dancing airily about, waving the letter triumphantly and then caressing it.

Iris shrieked the news across the garden to Taro, pirouetting on his beloved pole. He leaped down and came running to join them.

“Why he ride unto _you_?” demanded Plum Blossom, enviously.

“Well, now, I’ll tell you,” confided Marion, sweetly. “You know ever since we’ve been here I’ve heard nothing but Gozo, Gozo, Gozo, from you all. Goodness! you never speak a sentence without ‘Gozo’ in it. Well, _I_ began to think him a real hero, and I just longed to _know_ him. Besides”—she lowered her voice—”I did think he ought to be warned about that—about Summer!”

“About Summer?” repeated Plum Blossom, hazily.

“We kinno understan’. You spik so fast.”

“Oh, dear, don’t you see? Why, she’s not good enough for a _hero_—now is she?”

“Wha’s ‘hero’?” asked Taro, disgustedly. Had they brought him from his favorite sport merely to bother him with words he could not understand.

“A hero is—is—well, he’s something _grand_!”

Iris yawned sleepily. She had forgotten all about the letter and now was lying on the grass blinking sleepily at the blue sky overhead.

“You’re not listening, Iris,” said Marion, frowning upon her and forcing her to get up.

“Don’t you want to hear Gozo’s letter?”

“Yes, yes—spik it,” urged Plum Blossom.

“But I didn’t finish what I was saying—explaining _why_ he wrote me. Don’t you see, _I_ wrote to him first. Yes, I did, too, I wrote him the longest letter, and I told him about you all—and—and—can he read English?”

Billy had joined the group, and he spoke up now:

“Ah, sis, go on now—read his answer. What’s he say?”

“But I can’t read it. See, it’s in Japanese.”

“You read it, Taro.”

“Me?” Taro seized the letter, and began laboriously reading it in Japanese.

“Well, well, what does he say?” asked Marion, excitedly.

Plum Blossom looked over her brother’s shoulder and translated in this wise:

“M-M-MADAME,—Your letter got—

“Yours truly forever,

“KURUKAWA GOZO.”

“Is that all?” inquired Marion, blankly, her blue eyes filling with tears.

“Postscript,” shouted Taro, then read it: “Write agin, thangs!”

Marion pouted and sat down in deep dejection.

“Well, I won’t do it, if _that’s_ the way he answers _my_ letters.”

She took the letter and went to her mother.

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