And he called out with a very loud voice: "O my ladies, all things that you may require I have here with me!
"I have all jorogata-no-meshi-dogu; I have hair-combs and needles and tweezers; I have tategami, and combs of silver, and kamoji from Nagasaki, and even all kinds of Chinese mirrors!"
Whereupon the ladies, delighted with the idea of seeing these things, suffered the merchant to enter their apartment, which he presently made to look like a shop for the sale of female toilet articles.
(1) Nakodo. The profession of nakodo exists; but any person who arranges marriages for a consideration is for the time being called the nakodo.
But while making bargains and selling very quickly, Sayemon did not lose the good chance offered him; and taking from his box the love-letter which had been confided to him, he said to the ladies:—
"This letter, if I remember rightly, I picked up in some town in Hitachi, and I shall be very glad if you will accept it,—either to use it for a model if it be written beautifully, or to laugh at if it prove to have been written awkwardly."
Then the chief among the maids, receiving the letter, tried to read the writing upon the envelope: "Tsuki ni hoshi—ame ni arare ga—kori kana,"—
Which signified, "Moon and stars—rain and hail—make ice." But she could not read the riddle of the mysterious words.
The other ladies, who were also unable to guess the meaning of the words, could not but laugh; and they laughed so shrilly that the Princess Terute heard, and came among them, fully robed, and wearing a veil over her night-black hair.
And the bamboo-screen having been rolled up before her, Terute-Hime asked: "What is the cause of all this laughing? If there be anything amusing, I wish that you will let me share in the amusement."