5

Only Jiju~, her old nurse's daughter, was unable to leave. The high priestess of Kamo,+ whose house she had frequented, was no longer living, and life was very difficult and uncertain.

There was a lady, the princess's maternal aunt, who had fallen in the world and married a provincial governor. She was devoted to her daughters, into whose service she had brought numbers of not at all contemptible women. Jiju~ occasionally went to visit, for after all a house so close to her family was more inviting than a house of strangers.

The princess, of an extremely shy and retiring nature, had never warmed to her aunt, and there had been some petulance on the part of the latter.

“I know that my sister thought me a disgrace to the family,” she would say; “and that is why, though I feel very sorry indeed for your lady, I am able to offer neither help nor sympathy.”

She did, however, write from time to rime.

The sons and daughters of provincial governors are sometimes nobler than the high nobility, as they imitate their betters; and a child of the high nobility can sometimes sink to a lamentable commonness. So it was with the aunt, a drab, vulgar sort of person. She herself had come to be looked down upon, and now that her sister's house was in ruins she would have loved to hire her niece as governess. The princess was rather old-fashioned, it was true, but she could be depended upon.

“Do come and see us occasionally,” wrote the aunt. “There are several people here who long to hear your koto.”

Jiju~ kept at her lady to accept the invitarion; but, less from any wish to resist than from extreme and incurable shyness, the princess remained aloof, and the aunt's resentment unalloyed.