Read it through once

[14] Murasaki suggests that Shōnagon will lose Akiko’s confidence and be dismissed. There is indeed a tradition (_Kojidan_, vol. ii) that when some courtiers were out walking one day they passed a dilapidated hovel. One of them mentioned a rumour that Sei Shōnagon, a wit and beauty of the last reign, was now living in this place. Whereupon an incredibly lean hag shot her head out at the door, crying ‘Won’t you buy old bones, old rags and bones?’ and immediately disappeared again.