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158 ‘I don’t think that’s such a bad poem,’ he said smiling awkwardly. The nurse was in far too agitated a condition to indulge in literary pastimes. Utterly unable to produce any sort of reply, she begged her daughters to answer in her stead. ‘But mother darling,’ the young ladies protested, ‘if you cannot think of anything to say, still less can we….’ At last after much painful cogitation, the old lady recited the following poem, speaking as though she were addressing herself as much as him: ‘Unkind were it indeed should the Guardian of the Mirror frustrate the prayers of one who year on year hath been his and his alone.’ ‘What’s that?’ cried Tayū rushing towards her. ‘How dare you say such a thing?’ So sudden was his onrush that Shōni’s wife jumped almost out of her skin, and she turned pale with fright. Fortunately her daughters were not so easily scared, and one of them, laughing as though an absurd misunderstanding had occurred, at once said to Tayū: ‘What mother meant was this: she hopes that after all the trouble she has taken praying to the Gods of Matsura on our little niece’s behalf, they will not allow the poor girl’s deformity to turn you against her. But dear mother is getting old and it is not always easy to make out what she is saying.’ ‘Oho! Yes, yes, I see,’ he said, nodding his head reflectively. ‘I don’t know how I came to misunderstand it. Ha! ha! Very neatly expressed. I expect you look upon me as a very uncultivated, provincial person. And so I should be, if I were at all like the other people round here. But I’ve been very fortunate; you would not find many men even at the City who have had a better education than I. You’d be making a great mistake if you set me down as a plain, countrified sort of man. As a matter of fact, there’s nothing I have not studied.’ He would very much have liked to try his hand