10 Story Book, August 1938 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SHLET T F all the girls at No. 10 Tiang Street, () in. Jokyos Yoshiwata district, Katisha was the most difficult to manage. A temperamental Madame Butter- ily, she flitted all over the house, just wouldn’t follow the rules or stay put, in spite of punishments which were mild be- cause she was fresh, young property that mustn’t be marred. It was specially hard to keep her sitting in the show window when she wasn’t work- ing, particularly just after midnight, when her presence there might be most profitable. During the early evening she would sit calmly enough behind the bars of that great gilded cage which opened out to the street to display its living wares, like a porcelain goddess with folded kimono wings, she’d Y hum to herself and return the stares of appraising window-shoppers. But around midnight, when a drum beat in the nearby alley, announcing the closing of a cheap little side show or circus out back, a spell seemed to come upon her. The vivid red of persimmon mottled the edges of her cheeks, carefully enamelled pink, and soon after that drum stopped beating she would be missing and if stopped and questioned by the Madame on her way upstairs, Katisha would have a ready excuse about powdering her nose, fixing the cheek enamel or getting a cup of tea, though there was a pot of it standing beside her in the show window. The squint-eyed old Madame who kept (Continued to page 4) Comnicloool< CO