Nancy, engaged in pinning a rose on the lapel of her coat and looking at the effect with her pocket mirror, made no reply.

At the railroad station they were met by Reggie, Nicholas and Mr. Buxton.  Everybody was in the wildest spirits because of the change in the weather, and as they crowded, laughing and jostling each other, into the train, the Japanese travelers smiled good-naturedly.  They liked to see Americans enjoying the country.

Scarcely had they settled themselves in the train when they became aware that two Japanese women were smiling and bowing repeatedly in the most cordial manner.

“Why, it’s Mme. Ito,” exclaimed Miss Campbell.

“And O’Kami San,” finished Mary, who remembered names for everybody.

“Are you going to Nikko, too, O’Kami San?” asked Billie, sitting beside the pretty little Japanese.

O’Kami San looked much embarrassed and hung her head.

“Make honorable journey to husband’s home,” she said in a low voice.

“Have you been getting married?” demanded Billie, astonished.

“Yesterdays passing four,” answered O’Kami San.

“You mean four days ago?”

“Yes, honorable Mees Cam-el.”

Both Japanese women were beautifully dressed and it came out during the conversation that the young bride was wearing no less than five elaborate kimonos.

“But why?” demanded Billie.

O’Kami San explained that it was to avoid the inconveniences of luggage.  They were going to a little town in the hills and it would be difficult to carry trunks.

Around her head the bride wore a broad band of pink silk, almost covering her hair, to keep the horns of jealousy from growing.

Billie looked at her pityingly.

“Poor little thing,” she thought.  “Why doesn’t that good-for-nothing brother teach her something?  It doesn’t seem to me that his schooling did him any good.  He’s so fanatical and bigoted.”

“I hope you will be very happy, O’Kami San,” said Mary.  “I believe you said there was no mother-in-law.”

“Not no mother-in-law,” answered the bride, in the tone of one describing a great blessing.  “Honorable husband of age like mother-in-law.”

“You mean your husband is not young?”

O’Kami San nodded.

“Verily old,” she said, with just the faintest quiver at the corners of her mouth.

Mary and Billie regarded her with compassion.  How little romance there was in a Japanese girl’s life!  O’Kami San, so young and pretty and charming, too, was about to enter into years of drudgery perhaps; the wife of a cranky old man, and here she was accepting her fate as calmly as a novitiate about to take the vows for life and enter a convent.

“New husband much rich,” she said.  “Much old.  Need attentionly young wife.”

Only once did O’Kami San glance at the two handsome young men who belonged to the Campbell party.  But Nicholas, always gallant and thoughtful, helped Mme. Ito and her daughter to alight at the way-station where they were to change cars, while Reggie carried their small belongings and placed them on the platform.