this odious hurricane has put a stop to everything of that sort. What a depressing autumn it is going to be!’
But Yūgiri could not summon up much interest in the round of visits upon which his father had embarked, and slipped away to the rooms of his little sister, the Princess from Akashi. The child was not there. ‘She is still with Madam,’ her nurse said. ‘She went later than usual to-day. She was so frightened of the storm that it was a long time before she got to sleep, and we had a job to get her out of bed at all this morning.’ ‘When things began to be so bad,’ said Yūgiri, ‘I intended to come round here and sit up with her; but then I heard that my grandmother was very much upset, and thought that I had better go to her instead. What about the doll’s house? Has that come to any harm?’ The nurse and her companions laughed. ‘Oh, that doll’s house!’ one of them exclaimed. ‘Why, if I so much as fanned myself the little lady would always cry out to me that I was blowing her dolls to bits. You can imagine, then, what a time we had of it when the whole house was being blown topsy-turvy, and every minute something came down with a crash…. You’d better take charge of that doll’s house. I don’t mind telling you I’m sick to death of it!’
Yūgiri had several letters to write, and as the little girl was still with her step-mother he said to the nurse: ‘Might I have some ordinary paper. Perhaps from the writing-case in your own room….’ The nurse however went straight to the little Princess’s own desk and taking the cover off her lacquered writing-case laid upon it a whole roll of the most elegant paper she could find. Yūgiri at first protested. But after all, was not a rather absurd fuss made about this young lady and her future? There was nothing sacrosanct about her possessions; and accepting the paper, which was of a thin, purple variety, he mixed
