The summer heat intensified. June gave way to July and the humidity rose. Thunderstorms were a frequent occurrence. At night, when all in the boarding house retired for bed, the various noises of the day were replaced with a near-deafening chorus of crickets and frogs. Emma made hats for the girls and only went out in the cool of the morning when there were few others about. When the days were at their hottest, she would sit with her daughters in their room and read to them in English and in German, and she would continue the German lessons she had started back in Kobe, introducing vocabulary and teaching them short phrases.
In the hour or two when the girls were napping, Emma would take out the wooden box containing her silk tapestry, having decided if she could shuttle silk through the
