The girl with the peony lantern held it up so that the light fell upon him.
“Hagiwara Sama,” she cried, “by all that is most wonderful! Why, lord, we were told that you were dead. We have daily recited the Nembutsu for your soul these many moons!”
“Come in, come in, O’Yoné,” he said; “and is it indeed your mistress that you hold by the hand? Can it be my lady?… Oh, my love!”
O’Yoné answered, “Who else should it be?” and the two came in at the garden gate.
But the Lady of the Morning Dew held up her sleeve to hide her face.
“How was it I lost you?” said the samurai; “how was it I lost you, O’Yoné?”
“Lord,” she said, “we have moved to a little house, a very little house, in the quarter of the city which is called the Green Hill. We were suffered to take nothing with us there, and we are grown very poor. With grief and want my mistress is become pale.”
From “The Peony Lantern”
Green Willow and Other Japanese Fairy Tales, Grace James, 1910. Illustrations by Warwick Goble