ji did not go to the Palace for two or three days, but spent his
time in trying to train Violet. "She must soon take lessons in
writing," he thought, and he wrote several writing copies for her.
Among these was one in plain characters on violet-colored paper, with
the title, "Musashi-no" (The field of Musashi is known for its
violets). She took it up, and in handwriting plain and clear though
small, she found the following:

Though still a bud the violet be,
A still unopened blossom here,
Its tenderness has charms for me,
Recalling one no longer near.

"Come, _you_ must write one now," said Genji.

"I cannot write well enough," said Violet, looking up at him, with an
extremely charming look.

"Never mind, whether good or bad," said he, "but still write
something, to refuse is unkind. When there is any difficulty I will
help you through with it."

Thereupon she turned aside shyly and wrote something, handling the pen
gracefully with her tiny fingers. "I have done it badly," she cried
out, and tried to conceal what she had written, but Genji insisted on
seeing it and found the following:--

I wonder what's the floweret's name,
From which that bud its charm may claim!

This was, of course, written in a childish hand, but the writing was
large and plain, giving promise of future excellence.

"How like her grandmother's it is," thought Genji. "Were she to take
lessons from a good professor she might become a master of the art."

He ordered for her a beautiful doll's house, and played with her
different innocent and amusing games.

In the meantime, the Prince, her father, had duly arrived at the old
home of Violet and asked for her. The servants were embarrassed, but
as they had been requested by Genji not to tell, and as Shionagon had
also enjoined them to keep silence, they simply told him that the
nurse had taken her and absconded. The Prince was greatly amazed, but
he remembered that the girl's grandmother never consented to send his
daughter to his house, and knowing Shionagon to be a shrewd and
intelligent woman, he concluded that she had found out the reasons
which influenced her, and that so out of respect to her, and out of
dislike to tell him the reason of it, she had carried the girl off in
order that she might be kept away from him. He therefore merely told
the servants to inform him at once if they heard anything about them,
and he returned home.

Our story again brin