THE DRAGON PAINTER
then Tatsu and I could have begun to paint."
"Ara!" said Mata, uttering a sound more forcible than respectful. "Had it been a decent person thus married to my young mistress, instead of a mountain sprite, they should have had a month together!"
Kano groaned under the suggestion. "Then, heartless woman, at the end of the month you would have been without a master; for surely my sufferings would, in a month, have shrunk me to an insect gaki chirping from a tree."
"It is to me a matter of honorable amazement that in one week you are not already a gaki, with your incessant complaints," retorted the old dame, still unrelenting.
"If I could be sure he is painting all this interminable time," said Kano to himself, wringing the nervous hands together.
"You may be augustly sure he is not," chuckled the cruel Mata.
The old man got hastily to his feet.
144
