sit at the door like good children. Keep very still. Soon your mother will also be ready.”

Aoi expended less pains upon her own person. Her hair erection needed no re-dressing. She changed her cotton kimono for a very elegant silken one, powdered her face lightly in a trice, and a moment later was at the door, anxiously looking about for the children.

She was still a young woman, so pretty that it was hard to believe her the mother of a boy of sixteen. Her figure was slight and girlish, her face unmarked by any trace of age, save that the eyes were sad and anxious and the lips had a tendency to quiver pathetically. She fluttered down the little garden-path, looking right and left for the truants.

She discovered them bending over the great well in the garden.

“See,” said little Hyacinth. “There’s big cherry-tree in well, and little girl under it, also.”

Aoi looked at the reflection, lingered a moment, smiling pensively at the three faces in the water, then drew them away.

“Come,” she said. “Listen; those temple bells already are beginning to ring. We shall be late and disgrace his excellency.”

She opened a large paper parasol, and with Koma holding her sleeve on one side and Hyacinth on the other, they tripped up the hill to the little mission church.

They were late, as usual, to the extreme humiliation of Aoi, who shrank to the most obscure corner possible in the church. She gave one anxious, fluttering glance about her, shook her head at the restless Hyacinth, then very simply and naturally lifted her little, thin voice in singing with the rest of this strange congregation.

The old missionary at his stand, who had seen her entrance, beamed benignly upon her from over his spectacles. Though so old, his voice could be heard loud and clear, leading his little flock in their hymn of invocation.

The service was exceedingly simple. A reading from a Japanese translation of the Bible, a few announcements by the old pastor, then an address by a thin, curious-looking stranger, the new assistant of the missionary. After that followed the offerings, to which every one in the church contributed, even the children, then a sweet hymn, a solemn word of benediction, and church was over.

How strangely like the church in his own home in far-away England was this little mission-house to the old 

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