11

Niou hurried off to compose a note.

The sisters were in a daze. Nakanokimi was angry and sullen: so her sister had had these plans and had not permitted her an inkling of them. Oigimi, for her part, unable to find a convenient way to protest her innocence, could only sigh at the thought of how just this resentment was. The old women looked from one to the other in search of an explanation for this startling turn of events; but the lady who should have been their strength seemed lost to the world, and they could only go on wondering.

Oigimi opened the note and showed it to her sister, but Nakanokimi lay with her face pressed against her sleeve. “What a long time they are taking with their answer,” thought the messenger.

This was Niou's verse:

“You cannot think that a trifling urge induced me

To brave, for you, that tangled, dew-drenched path?”

The accomplished hand, ever more remarkable, had delighted them back in the days when it had been of no particular concern to them. Now it was a source of apprehension. Oigimi did not think it seemly to step forward and answer in her sister's place. She limited herself to pressing the claims of propriety, and finally persuaded Nakanokimi to put together a note. They rewarded the messenger with a woman's robe in the wildaster* combination and a pair of doubly lined trousers.+ The messenger, a court page whom Niou often made use of and who would be unlikely to attract notice, seemed reluctant to accept the gifts, which they therefore wrapped in a cloth parcel and handed to his man. Having been at such pains to make the mission inconspicuous, Niou was annoyed. He blamed the officious old woman of the evening before.

He asked Kaoru to be his guide again that evening.

“I am really very sorry, but I have an engagement at the Reizei Palace from which I cannot ask to be excused.”

“So it is with my worthy friend—not at all interested in the most interesting things in life.”