Read it through once

The poem was as follows: ‘Not even on this distracted night when howling winds drive serried hosts of cloud across the sky, do I for an instant forget thee, thou Unforgettable One.’ He tied this to a tattered spray of miscanthus that he had picked up in the porch. At this there was general laughter. ‘It’s clear you haven’t read your Katano no Shōshō’[195] said one of the nurses, ‘or you would at least choose a flower that matched your paper....’ ‘You are quite right,’ he answered rather sulkily, ‘I have never bothered my head about such matters. No doubt one ought to go tramping about the countryside looking for an appropriate flower; but I have no intention of doing so....’ He had always seemed to the nurses and other such ladies of the household very difficult to get anything out of. Apparently he did not care what impression he made upon them; and as a matter of fact they were beginning to think him rather priggish and stuck-up.