“Now, what’s all this about women and sleeve-linings? Sure you wouldn’t grudge poor old father that little green rag for his bed? Come, my dear, I’ll buy you twenty sleeve-linings.”
At that she jumped to her feet and fairly danced with rage.
“Old father! old father! old father!” she screamed; “am I a fool or a child? I saw the woman with my own eyes.”
The poor young man didn’t know whether he was on his head or his heels. “Is it possible that my father is gone?” he said, and he took the mirror from the _toko no ma_.
“That’s well; still the same old father that I bought for two _bu_. You seem worried, father; nay, then, smile as I do. There, that’s well.”
Mistress Tassel came like a little fury and snatched the mirror from his hand. She gave but one look into it and hurled it to the other end of the room. It made such a clang against the woodwork, that servants and neighbours came rushing in to see what was the matter.
“It is my father,” said the young man. “I bought him in Kioto for two _bu_.”
“He keeps a woman in the cupboard who has stolen my green sleeve-linings,” sobbed the wife.
After this there was a great to-do. Some of the neighbours took the man’s part and some the woman’s, with such a clatter and chatter and noise as never was; but settle the thing they could not, and none of them would look into the mirror, because they said it was bewitched.
They might have gone on the way they were till doomsday, but that one of them said, “Let us ask the Lady Abbess, for she is a wise woman.” And off they all went to do what they might have done sooner.
The Lady Abbess was a pious woman, the head of a convent of holy nuns. She was the great one at prayers and meditations and at mortifyings of the flesh, and she was the clever one, none the less, at human affairs. They took her the mirror, and she held it in her hands and looked into it for a long time. At last she spoke:
“This poor woman,” she said, touching the mirror, “for it’s as plain as daylight that it is a woman--this poor woman was so troubled in her mind at the disturbance that she caused in a quiet house, that she has taken vows, shaved her head, and become a holy nun. Thus she is in her right place here. I will keep her, and instruct her in prayers and meditations. Go you home, my children; forgive and forget, be friends.”