Ladyship. For a moment they surveyed him with astonishment, but presently one of the under-servants exclaimed: ‘Why, it’s the little boy from the northern wing!’, and took the letter, which ultimately reached the hands of a certain gentlewoman named Tayū no Kimi. This lady actually carried it into Lady Chūjō’s presence, unfolded it at her bidding and then held it in front of her. The great lady glanced at it, smiled, and indicated that it might now be removed. It happened that a certain Lady Chūnagon was at the moment in attendance. She caught a side view of the letter where it lay, and hoping to be allowed to read it properly, she remarked: ‘At a distance, Madam, that looks an uncommonly fashionable note.’ Lady Chūjō motioned her to take the letter: ‘I cannot make head or tail of it,’ she said; ‘you will be doing me a service if you can tell me what it is about. Perhaps I am being stupid over these cursive characters….’ And a few minutes later: ‘How are you getting on? If my answer has no connection with the contents of her letter, she will think me very discourteous. I wish you would write an answer for me, I am sure you would do it very nicely….’ The young ladies-in-waiting, though they dared not openly show their amusement, were now all tittering behind their sleeves. Some one came to say that the boy was still waiting for an answer. ‘But the letter is just one mass of stock phrases that none of them seem to have anything to do with what she is trying to say,’ exclaimed Chūnagon in despair. ‘How can I possibly answer it? Besides, I must make it seem to come from you, Madam, not from a third person, or the poor creature’s feelings will be terribly hurt.’
‘It vexes me,’ wrote Chūnagon in her mistress’s name, ‘to think that we should have been at close quarters for so long without arranging to meet. By all means come….’ And at the side she wrote the poem: ‘Upon the shore of
