He told her the truth, the good young man. “And now I have my dear old father home again, I’m as happy as the day is long,” he says.
“And wasn’t two _bu_ cheap,” he says, “and wasn’t it a strange thing altogether?”
“Cheap, indeed,” says she, “and passing strange; and why, if I may ask,” she says, “did you say nought of all this at the first?”
“Indeed, then, I cannot tell you, my dear,” he says. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know,” and with that he went out to his work.
Up jumped Mistress Tassel the minute his back was turned, and to the _toko no ma_ she flew on the wings of the wind and flung open the doors with a clang.
“My green silk for sleeve-linings!” she cried at once; “but I don’t see any old father here, only a white wooden box. What can he keep in it?”
“What an odd flat shining thing!” she said, and, taking up the mirror, looked into it.
For a moment she said nothing at all, but the great tears of anger and jealousy stood in her pretty eyes, and her face flushed from forehead to chin.
“A woman!” she cried, “a woman! So that is his secret! He keeps a woman in this cupboard. A woman, very young and very pretty--no, not pretty at all, but she thinks herself so. A dancing-girl from Kioto, I’ll be bound; ill-tempered too--her face is scarlet; and oh, how she frowns, nasty little spitfire. Ah, who could have thought it of him? Ah, it’s a miserable girl I am--and I’ve cooked his _daikon_ and mended his _hakama_ a hundred times. Oh! oh! oh!”
With that, she threw the mirror into its case, and slammed-to the cupboard door upon it. Herself she flung upon the mats, and cried and sobbed as if her heart would break.
“I’ve broken the thong of my sandal,” says he, “and I’ve come to---- But what in the world?” and in an instant he was down on his knees beside Mistress Tassel doing what he could to comfort her, and to get her face up from the floor where she kept it.
“Why, what is it, my own darling?” says he.
“_Your_ own darling!” she answers very fierce through her sobs; and “I want to go home,” she cries.
“But, my sweet, you are at home, and with your own husband.”
“Pretty husband!” she says, “and pretty goings-on, with a woman in the cupboard! A hateful, ugly woman that thinks herself beautiful; and she has _my_ green sleeve-linings there with her to boot.”