Page:The Sacred Tree (Waley 1926).pdf/239

Rh friends. And so, greatly to the aunt’s discomfiture, the matter was dropped.

About this time her uncle was appointed treasurer to a provincial district. He intended to take his family with him, and was anxious to equip his daughters with attendants whom it would be pleasant to name in the ears of provincial visitors. The chance of being able to exhibit a real princess as a member of their staff was not to be thrown away and the aunt returned once more to the attack. ‘I am very worried at having to go so far away from you,’ she sent word by Jijū. “We have not had the pleasure of seeing you much lately; but it was a great comfort to me to feel that I was near at hand and could help you if anything went wrong. I am most anxious that, if possible, we should not be separated….’ All this had no effect whatever. ‘The conceited little fool! I have no patience with her,’ the aunt cried out at last. ‘She may have these grand ideas about herself if she chooses; but no one else is going to take much notice of a creature that goes on year after year living in the hole-and-corner way that she does; least of all this famous Prince Genji, with whom she pretends to be so intimate.’

At last came Genji’s pardon and recall, celebrated in every part of the kingdom by riotous holiday-making and rejoicing. His friends of either sex were soon vying with one another in demonstrations of good will and affection. These testimonies to his popularity, pouring in from persons of every rank and condition in life, naturally touched him deeply, and in these stirring days it would have been strange indeed if many minor affairs had not escaped his memory. But for her the time of his restoration was far harder to bear than that of his exile. For whereas she had before confidently looked forward to his return, counting upon it as we count upon the winter trees to bud again in spring,