it,’ and so saying she left the room. She was a pleasant-looking woman, with very long, wavy hair. The others called her Nurse Shōnagon, and she seemed to be in charge of the child. ‘Come,’ said the nun to the little girl, ‘you must not be such a baby. You are thinking all the time of things that do not matter at all. Just fancy! Even now when I am so ill that any day I may be taken from you, you do not trouble your head about me, but are grieving about a sparrow. It is very unkind, particularly as I have told you I don’t know how many times that it is naughty to shut up live things in cages. Come over here!’ and the child sat down beside her. Her features were very exquisite; but it was above all the way her hair grew, in cloudy masses over her temples, but thrust back in childish fashion from her forehead, that struck him as marvellously beautiful. As he watched her and wondered what she would be like when she grew up it suddenly occurred to him that she bore no small resemblance to one whom he had loved with all his being,[1] and at the resemblance he secretly wept.
The nun, stroking the child’s hair, now said to her: ‘It’s a lovely mop, though you are so naughty about having it combed. But it worries me very much that you are still so babyish. Some children of your age are very different. Your dear mother was only twelve when her father died; yet she showed herself quite capable of managing her own affairs. But if I were taken from you now, I do not know what would become of you, I do not indeed,’ and she began to weep. Even Genji, peeping at the scene from a distance, found himself becoming quite distressed. The girl, who had been watching the nun’s face with a strange unchildish intensity, now dropped her head disconsolately, and as she did so her hair fell forward across
- ↑ Fujitsubo, who was indeed the child’s aunt.
