illow in the fifth
watch of the night:--
The wind shakes the pine trees and the bamboos; can it be my beloved?

when there comes borne to me the sound of her voice, humming as she
sat alone:--

"The breezes through the pine trees moan,
The dying torch burns low;
Ah me! 'tis eerie all alone!
Say, will he come or no?"

So I gave a gentle rap on the back door, on hearing which she cried
out: "Who's there? who's there?" Well, a shower was falling at the
time. So I answered by singing:--

Who comes to see you Hana dear,
Regardless of the soaking rain?
And do your words, Who's there, who's there?
Mean that you wait for lovers twain?

to which Hana replied:--

"What a fine joke! well, who can tell?
On such a dark and rainy night
Who ventures out must love me well,
And I, of course, must be polite,
And say: Pray sir, pass this way."

And, with these words, she loosened the ring and staple with a
cling-a-ring, and pushed open the door with a crick-a-tick; and while
the breeze from the bamboo blind poured towards me laden with the
scent of flowers, out she comes to me, and, "At your service, sir,"
says she, "though I am but a poor country maid." So in we went, hand
in hand, to the parlor. But yet her first question, "Who's there?" had
left me so doubtful as to whether she might not be playing a double
game, that I turned my back on her, and said crossly that I supposed
she had been expecting a number of lovers, and that the thought quite
spoiled my pleasure. But oh! what a darling Hana is! Coming to my side
and clasping tight my hand, she whispered, saying:

"If I do please you not, then from the first
Better have said that I do please you not;
But wherefore pledge your troth, and after turn
Against me? Alas! alas!

"Why be so angry? I am playing no double game." Then she asked why I
had not brought you, Taraukuwazhiya, with me; and on my telling her
the reason why you had remained at home, "Poor fellow!" said she, "how
lonely he must be all by himself! Never was there a handier lad at
everything than he, though doubtless it is a case of the mugwort
planted among the hemp, which grows straight without need of twisting,
and of the sand mixed with the mud, which gets black without need of
dyeing,[177] and it is his having been bound to you from a boy that
has made him so genteel and clever. Please always be a kind master t