noting that Genji was listening with particular attention continued: ‘I must tell you that I too have reason to be interested in this house, and while making enquiries on my own account I discovered that the young lady always addresses the other girls in the house as though they were her equals. But when, pretending to be taken in by this comedy, I began visiting there, I noticed that though the older ladies played their part very well, the young girls would every now and then curtsey or slip in a “My Lady” without thinking; whereupon the others would hasten to cover up the mistake as best they might, saying anything they could think of to make it appear that there was no mistress among them,’ and Koremitsu laughed as he recollected it.
‘Next time I come to visit your mother’ said Genji, ‘you must let me have a chance of peeping at them.’ He pictured to himself the queer, tumbled-down house. She was only living there for the time being; but all the same she must surely belong to that ‘bottom class’ which they had dismissed as having no possible bearing on the discussion. How amusing it would be to show that they were wrong and that after all something of interest might be discovered in such a place!