Read it through once
So they spent the day, now talking, now praying, or again amusing themselves by watching the hordes of pilgrims who were constantly arriving at the temple gate. Under their windows ran a river called the Hatsuse, and Ukon now recited the acrostic poem: ‘Had I not entered the gate that the Twin Fir-Trees guard, would the old river of our days e’er have resumed its flow?’ To this Tamakatsura answered: ‘Little knew I of those early days as this river knows of the hill from whence it sprang.’ She sat gently weeping. But Ukon made no effort to comfort her, feeling that now all was on the right path. Considering Tamakatsura’s upbringing no one would have blamed her if there had been a little country roughness, a shade of over-simplicity in her manner. Ukon could not imagine how the old nurse had achieved so remarkable a feat of education, and thanked her again and again for what she had done. Yūgao’s ways had till the last been timid, docile, almost child-like; but about her daughter there was not a trace of all this. Tamakatsura, despite her shyness, had an air of self-assurance, even of authority. ‘Perhaps,’ thought Ukon to herself, ‘Tsukushi is not by any means so barbarous a place as one is led to suppose.’ She began thinking of all the Tsukushi people she had known; each individual she could recall was more coarse-mannered and uneducated than the last. No; nurse’s achievement remained a mystery.