9

Yu~giri was not happy at being taken on this round of calls. There was a letter which he wished to get off and soon it would be noon.

He went to his sister's rooms.

“She is over in the other wing,” said her nurse. “She was so frightened at the storm that we could not get her out of bed this morning.”

“It was an awful storm. I meant to stay with you, but my grandmother was in such a state that I really couldn't. And how did our dollhouses come through?”

The women laughed. “Even the breeze from a fan sends her into a terror, and last night we thought the roof would come down on us any minute. The dollhouses required a great deal of battening and shoring.”

“Do you have a scrap of paper? Anything will do. And maybe I could borrow an inkstone from one of you?”

A woman went to one of her mistress's cupboards and came back with several rolls of paper laid out on a writing box.

“This is too good.” But he thought of the Akashi lady and decided that he need not feel overawed. He wrote his letter, choosing a purple tissue paper. He ground the ink carefully and was very handsome as he gazed meditatively at the tip of his brush. Yet his poem had a somewhat stiff and academic sound to it:

“Even on a night of raging tempests

I did not forget the one whom I do not forget.”

He tied it to a rush broken by the wind.

“The lieutenant of Katano,” * said the women, “was always careful to have the flower or the grass match the paper.”

“I do not seem up to these fine distinctions. What flower or grass would you suggest?” He had few words for these women and kept them at a distance.

He wrote another note and gave both to a cavalry officer who in turn passed them on, with whispered instructions, to a pretty little page and a guardsman accustomed to such services. The young women were over-come with curiosity.

They were busy getting the rooms in order, for word had come that their mistress was returning. After the other beauties he had seen in recent hours, Yu~giri wondered what floral image his sister would call to mind. She had not much interested him, but now he took a crouched position behind a swinging door and, pulling a blind over himself, looked through an opening in the curtains. She came into the room. He was annoyed at the furniture that stood in the way and at all the women passing back and forth. But she was charming, a tiny thing in a lavender robe, her hair, which did not yet reach to her feet, spreading out like a fan. She had blossomed wonderfully in the two years since he had last seen her. What a beauty she would presently be! He had likened the other two ladies to the cherry and the yamabuki—and might he liken his sister to the wisteria? There was just such elegance in wisteria trailing from a high tree and waving in the breeze. How good if he could look upon these ladies quite as he wished, morning and night. He saw no reason why he should not, since it was all in the family, but Genji had other ideas and was very strict about keeping him away from them—and so created restless yearnings in this most proper of young men.