life work, and the merciful Buddha is preparing my platform of lotus blossoms, I am very sure.”
“Does the merciful Buddha want you to take your old clipped nails with you when you go to the lotus platform?”
“No; he does not care about my body. He cares only for me.”
“Then why did you save your nails so carefully?”
Mother glanced toward the closed shrine.
“The holy shrine, little Chiyo, is only a box when it is empty,” she said, “and my body is only a borrowed shrine in which I live. But it is proper courtesy to leave a borrowed article in the best condition.”
Chiyo’s eyes looked very deep and solemn for a moment.
“That’s why we have to take a bath every day and always keep our teeth clean. Dear me! I never thought of that as being polite to God.”
I had been so anxious over the children’s shortcomings in etiquette and so happy over the slow but satisfactory outcome that I had never given a thought to the changes which my years in America must have made in myself. One afternoon, coming back from a hurried errand, I was walking rapidly up the road toward home when I saw Mother standing in the gateway watching me. I knew that she disapproved of my undignified haste, as indeed she should, for nothing is more ungraceful than a hurrying woman in Japanese dress.
She met me with her usual bow, then said with a gentle smile, “Etsu-bo, you are growing to be very like your honourable father.”
I laughed, but my cheeks were hot as I walked up the path beside her, accepting silently the needed reproof, for no Japanese woman likes to be told that her walk suggests that of a man. Occasional hints like this kept my manners from marching with my mind on the road to prog-
