‘So again and again have I heard the Emperor speak with tears. But now the night is far spent and I must carry my message to the Palace before day comes.’
So she, weeping too, spoke as she hurried away. But the sinking moon was shining in a cloudless sky, and in the grass-clumps that shivered in the cold wind, bell-crickets tinkled their compelling cry. It was hard to leave these grass-clumps, and the quiver-bearer’s daughter, loth to ride away, recited the poem which says ‘Ceaseless as the interminable voices of the bell-cricket, all night till dawn my tears flow.’ The mother answered ‘Upon the thickets that teem with myriad insect voices falls the dew of a Cloud Dweller’s tears’; for the people of the Court are called dwellers above the clouds. Then she gave the messenger a sash, a comb and other things that the dead lady had left in her keeping,—gifts from the Emperor which now, since their use was gone, she sent back to him as mementoes of the past. The nurse-maids who had come with the boy were depressed not so much at their mistress’s death as at being suddenly deprived of the daily sights and sensations of the Palace. They begged to go back at once. But the mother was determined not to go herself, knowing that she would cut too forlorn a figure. On the other hand if she parted with the boy, she would be daily in great anxiety about him. That was why she did not immediately either go with him herself or send him to the Palace.
The quiver-bearer’s daughter found the Emperor still awake. He was, upon pretext of visiting the flower-pots in front of the Palace which were then in full bloom, waiting for her out of doors, while four or five trusted ladies conversed with him.