Page:Blue Trousers (Waley 1928).pdf/41

a very clever thing to take a poor girl away from her village and make a joke of her in this fine house. Yes, you’re very grand people, Prime Ministers and I don’t know what! I do you reverence. . . .’ And with this she retreated to a corner, stepping backwards in mock obeisance.

Kashiwagi surveyed her as she crouched panting in her corner. She was not such a bad-looking creature. But at the present moment, with her face contorted by rage and her eyeballs extended to twice their proper size, she cut so fantastic a figure that he was obliged to agree with her own dictum: it was indeed a mistake on his part ever to have brought her here. He now made vain efforts to calm her, which were seconded by his brother Kōbai, who said: ‘It is quite true that our sister Lady Chūjō has a certain influence in such matters, and I am sure she will do her best for you. But you must first calm yourself down a little. At the present you look for all the world like the Sun Goddess,^[1] when she “stamped on the hard stones of her courtyard till the chips flew like snow.” Be patient a little while longer, and you will find that Lady Chūjō is most anxious to do what she can for you.’ ‘If you go on like this,’ Kashiwagi could not help observing, ‘we shall all hope that, like the Sun Goddess, you will end by shutting yourself up in a cave.’ At this point he and Kōbai withdrew.

‘Your brothers would never dare come here and make fun of me like this unless you put them up to it,’ Ōmi now gasped to Lady Chūjō between her tears. But she still did not despair of winning her sister’s good graces, and to that end she now flung herself with alacrity into all the odd