 | The Diary of Dewdrop |  |
The Next Day
When I awoke to-day, the morning was tapping at my blinds, so that I opened them wide to receive the air and sunshine. The rain had all passed
“Ah,” I sighed, “they are fickle as a child, whose tears are for the moment only. I will not look at them. They are hard and cold and soulless.” And, with that, I was about to close my shades petulantly, when a voice sprang out of the garden, and, from behind an old cherry tree, a young man's face smiled up at me like the rising sun.
“Good morning, Dewdrop! Won't you come down and play with me? I shall teach you how to fly my old Chinese kite, and, if you are very good, I shall take you out in my small sailboat, and you will be the daughter of the dragon king, and I the fisher-boy Urashima, and we shall sail away until we find the shores of the island ‘where summer never dies.’”
“Oh, Ido, Ido, Ido! is it really you?” I cried out.
He came close under my window, and blew kisses at me, as he used to do when a little boy. My hair was all about me like a mantle of lacquer, or a cloud about the moon, and I knew my cheeks were flaming like the poppies in my garden.
“Ah!” said Ido, softly, “you are more beautiful than ever, my little love. You are the sun-goddess! Behold me! I worship thee!”
“Hush!” I whispered; “do not joke, dear Ido, now; but tell me, where did you come from?”
“Oh, dear my little friend,” he cried, in a joyous voice, “I have dropped down at your feet from another planet.”
“No, no, pray do not laugh at me,” I beseeched, so earnestly that he quickly changed his tone.
“Well, I have just returned from a long sojourn in the West. I have been in Germany, in France, in England, and even in America. And I have come back now to the Land of God and Home and Beauty, and--to you, Dewdrop!”
“Me?” I whispered, wistfully; and then I heard my stepfather's voice, and all of a sudden I remembered everything, and my teeth began to chatter with fright and misery.
“Go! go away quickly, dear Ido! Here comes my august stepfather, and he will surely kill me if he catches me.”
But Ido stood his ground fearlessly and bravely. “And why, pray, may I not speak to my old playmate?” he asked.
“Because--because--yesterday I was--because--oh, Ido, just because!” I answered him, for I could not bring the words to tell him of my betrothal.
I closed the shutters sharply in his face. A few minutes later, I made a little peephole with my finger through them, and peered out, with bated breath. He was still waiting there, his head thrown back, his arms folded across his breast. He looked like the statue of a young god.
Just then, Madame Summer entered my chamber, and I rushed to her and frantically besought her to get rid of the boy, but to tell him nothing of my betrothal. I would tear her to pieces, I promised her, if she did so.
Later in the day, when I drove out in my jinrikisha to go to the city to purchase material for my wedding garments, Ido stepped out from a small wood close to our house, and, stopping the runner with a peremptory voice, he spoke to me distantly and proudly.
“You have changed much, my old friend,” he said. “It is true that your beauty of face has increased with the years, but how is it with the beauty of your soul? I do not recognize you in your new pride, which ill becomes my little friend dewdrop.”
I leaned far out of the vehicle. “No, no, dear Ido!” I breathed, so softly that the runner might not hear me; “I am the same little Dewdrop to you, always and ever. I pray that you will think kindly of me.”
His face lighted up gloriously in a moment, and he stood aside for my runner to pass, with a courtly, graceful bow for me.
| The Diary of Dewdrop | |