The heart of Hyacinth Author:Onoto Watanna Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill Old Mume was busily engaged in the kitchen. The milk over the fire had begun to bubble. With a large wooden stick she stirred it. Then she returned to her... more » rice. As she pounded it into flat cakes, her old face, with its hundred wrinkles, was contorted, and she muttered and talked to herself as she worked. She was like some old witch, breathing incantations. At the threshold of the room stood Koma. His eyes were very wide open and his cheeks were flushed. At his side his little hands were sharply clinched. His whole attitude betokened excitement and impatience. Suddenly he clapped his hands so loudly and sharply that the old woman started in fright; then catching sight of the little intruder, she hobbled towards him on her heels, her tongue in angry operation. "Now, who but an evil one would frighten an old woman? Shame upon you, naughty one!" "Oh, Mume, you are so slow the evil one will catch you. Just see, the milk boils over. Still you do not hasten. Yet the illustrious ones are ill, very ill." "Tsh!" scolded the old woman, as she poured the steaming milk into a shallow bowl, and broke pieces of the rice-bread into it. "What, would you advise old Mume about such matters ? Would you have me burn the honorable babe?" She cooled the preparation with her hand, fanning it back and forth across the bowl. Koma watched her a moment with smouldering eyes. Suddenly he started, his little ears alert and attentive. A cry, thin and piping at first, grew in volume. Was it possible that so small a thing could fill the house with itsnoise? Koma strode to the fire, seized the bowl with both hands, and, before the grumbling old servant could interfere, he was gone with it from the room, and speeding along the hall. With his finger-tips on the closed shoji of the gues...« less