For the first time Taro Burton paused, and looked with dreadful eyes at its dull surface, which even the darkness of the night and the miserable rain could not obliterate entirely. What were the memories that crowded back on him, suffocating him? Here it was that he and Yuki had grown up together. The little boat was the same, the island as small and neat, the house seemed as ever; nothing had changed. Yes, there was Yuki! A deep groan slipped from his lips.
There was a difference of seven years in their ages, but a stronger bond of sympathy and comradeship had existed between these two than is usual between brother and sister. Their nationality had to a large extent isolated them from other children, for the Japanese children had laughed at their hair and eyes, and called them "Kirishitans" (Christians). Until he was seven years of age, Taro had manfully, though bitterly, fought his battles alone. He had been a queer, brooding little lad, of passionate and violent temper, and, apparently, scorning any overtures of friendship from any one outside his own household.
When the little sister had come, the boy had gone suddenly wild with joy, and had proceeded to bestow upon her the same worshipful love his mother gave exclusively to him, for Snowflake had been born when their English father lay at the gates of death, her tiny soul fluttering into life just as that of her father drifted outward into eternity, so that to Omatsu, the mother, who was passionately absorbed in her grief, her arrival had been a source of irritation. But Taro had carried her to the family temple, and had, himself, named her "Snowflake" (Yuki), for she had come at a time when all the land was covered with whiteness. There had been a frost and even a snowfall, which is rare in that part of the country. Moreover, she resembled a snowflake, so soft and white and pure.
How was it possible for him, after all these years, to come, as he now had come, once more to this place of which she had always been a part, and with which she had always been lovingly associated in his mind, and not be filled with emotions that rent his heart. She had been his inspiration and all the world to him.
He remembered how they would drift around in their tiny boat, and she, little autocrat, would perch before him, her eyes dancing and shining, while he told her the story of the fisher-boy Urashima and his bride, the daughter of the dragon king. And when he would finish, for the hundredth time, perhaps, she would say, "See, Taro-sama, I am the princess, and you the fisher-boy. We are sailing, sailing, sailing on the sea 'where Summer never dies,'" and he, to please her fancy, drifted on and on with her, around and around the little pond, until the sun began to sink in the west and the little mother would call them in-doors.