Yuki Chan watched the play of the light in the half-dark room.
Then Yuki Chan nestled close, and gave little pats of love and tried to listen.
It was something every little girl must know, and if Yuki Chan's honorable ears refused to open, how would she learn?
Yuki Chan looked ruefully at the muddy prints she had made and realized that she had been a most impolite little girl.
Yuki Chan listened very little, so concerned was she with her own comments, until she happened to see an anxious look creep into her mother's eyes.
The night-lamp made shadowy ghosts of all it touched, and one gleam of light, escaping the paper shade, hung like an aureole above the head of Yuki Chan's mother as she knelt with clasped hands before the Buddha on the shelf.
From that time to this love had prevailed, and as Yuki Chan climbed on the porch, besmirching its shining surface with her muddy little feet, that had been guiltless of sandals all day, the faces of the two old people lighted up with sudden joy.
The years of toil were telling on both father and mother, but they daily refreshed themselves at the overbrimming fountain of Yuki Chan's youth, and now, as they each took one of her hands to go in to see the dolls, they were so gay that the child suggested that instead of walking they should do the new one-two-three-hop she had learned at the kindergarten.