“Does the honorable cortège leave before noon?” asked the maid.
“Yes.”
“And all the kuge (court nobles) and the ladies, also, go?”
“Yes.”
“Then I must haste. The sky already lightens. The night is past. When will my mistress sleep?”
“There is much time for us to sleep to-morrow. We do not accompany Prince Komatzu’s train,” said Sado-ko in a low voice, as though she spoke half to herself.
The maid paused in her arrangement of her mistress’s couch, and, kneeling, stared at her.
“Noble princess, did you not just now speak of a journey?” she asked, with evident agitation.
“Yes,” said the princess, wearily; “to-morrow we also will make a journey, but—we go alone! Pray you, hurry with my bed, Natsu-no.”
Without speaking the maid drew the robe about the princess, now upon the couch. Then she spread her own quilt-mattress at the feet of her mistress.