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✻ miss lily and miss chrysanthemum: the love story of two japanese girls in chicago Yuri (which is “Lily” in English) and Kiku (which is “Chrysanthemum”) met in one of the noisy and crowded railway stations in Chicago. They were sisters, half Japanese and half English; but neither could understand one word the other spoke, for Yuri had been taken by her English father, who had been long since dead, from Japan when a little bit of a girl, and had lived most of her life in England and afterward in America, so that she had forgotten her mother tongue; while Kiku had stayed with the little mother in Japan, whose recent death had left her so lonely that she had come all the way to America to join her sister, of whom she had only the dimmest memory. For in this double orphanage, thousands and thousands of miles apart, the two had felt strangely drawn to each other. They were very much alike in appearance, only Yuri looked older and perhaps sadder than Kiku, who really was the younger by two years, and who was fairly beaming with excitement. She chatted away in Japanese to Yuri, forgetting that Yuri would not understand her, and turning half apologetically to be interpreted by the kind English lady who had known her very well in Japan and had brought her to her sister. “Your sister is pleased to be with you,” she said to Yuri. The girl flushed with pleasure and put her arm affectionately about Kiku. “And I am glad to have her with me.” Then she added, “But I would rather have gone home to her.” ✻ ✻ ✻ Six months passed rapidly, and Kiku had learned to speak English brokenly . The two little strangers boarded together on the South Side. They had an east room which overlooked Lake Michigan. Each morning as Yuri rose softly from the bed, so as not to awaken Kiku, she would throw open the green shutters, and resting her elbows on the sill, look dreamily out across 68 Part 1: Short Fiction the lake, letting the cool breeze fan her, and watching with eager eyes the sun rise. In those early hours, before Kiku had awakened, Yuri would make great plans for their future. She thought of how much she could save out of her salary (for she was employed as a teacher in one of the public schools in Chicago), so that she and Kiku might return together to Japan. She knew it would take some years before she would have sufficient to take them both back, for Kiku’s pretended cheeriness had not deceived her, and the pitiful quivering of the girl’s lips told of her homesickness. Yuri had looked forward for years to the time when she should have enough to take her to Japan. Perhaps she loved even more dearly than Kiku the home that she could not remember. She had almost lived on the hope of going there; but now a new difficulty stood in her way—Kiku had had only enough money wherewith to bring her to America, and was entirely dependent now on her sister, whose salary had only recently been sufficient to lay any aside. Moreover, Kiku was pining for her home, and Yuri knew that when the little fund in the bank should have grown large enough to permit of the trip, it must be Kiku, and not she, who would go. Kiku was nineteen years old; Yuri, though only two years older, felt as a mother to her little foreign sister. A love wonderful in its strength, devotion and unselfishness had sprung up between these two. Kiku loved Yuri with a pride in her that was pathetic in its confidence, but Yuri’s love partook of the supreme and tender love of a good mother. “Oh, Kiku,” she would say, before starting out in the morning, “you must be careful when you go out not to go far, for I don’t want my little Yap to lose herself,” and Kiku would say with her pretty English lisp, “Ess, liddle mozzer.” ✻ ✻ ✻ Walter Palmer was a young lawyer who boarded in the same house as Yuri and Kiku. He had been in love with Yuri-San for many days, but the girl had known nothing of this. Her life had been a hard one, and the struggle she had had in order to put herself through college and support herself at the same...

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