spot. 'I don't fancy this card,' she smiled. 'What I fear is that our dear senior will get a full hand.'
'I've played wrong!' lady Feng laughingly exclaimed at these words.
Dowager lady Chia laughed, and throwing down her cards, 'If you dare,' she shouted, 'take it back! Who told you to play the wrong card?'
'Didn't I want to have my fortune told?' lady Feng observed. 'I played this card of my own accord, so there's no one with whom I can find fault.'
'You should then beat your own lips and punish your own self; it's only fair;' old lady Chia remarked. Then facing Mrs. Hsueeh, 'I'm not a niggard, fond of winning money,' she went on to say, 'but it was my good luck!'
'Don't we too think as much?' Mrs. Hsueeh smiled. 'Who's there stupid enough to say that your venerable ladyship's heart is set upon money?'
Lady Feng was busy counting the cash, but catching what was said, she restrung them without delay. 'I've got my share,' she said, laughingly to the company. 'It isn't at all that you wish to win. It's your good luck that made you come out a winner! But as for me, I am really a mean creature; and, as I managed to lose, I count the money and put it away at once.'
Dowager lady Chia usually made Yuean Yang shuffle the cards for her, but being engaged in chatting and joking with Mrs. Hsueeh, she did not notice Yuean Yang take them in hand. 'Why is it you're so huffed,' old lady Chia asked, 'that you don't even shuffle for me?'
'Lady Feng won't let me have the money!' Yuean Yang replied, picking up the cards.
'If she doesn't give the money,' dowager lady Chia observed, 'it will be a turning-point in her luck. Take that string of a thousand cash of hers,' she accordingly directed a servant, 'and bring it bodily over here!'
A young waiting-maid actually fetched the string of cash and deposited it by the side of her old mistress.
'Let me have them,' lady Feng eagerly cried smiling, 'and I'll square all that's due, and finish.'
'In very truth, lady Feng, you're a miserly creature!' Mrs. Hsueeh laughed. 'It's simply for mere fun, nothing more!'
Lady Feng, at this insinuation, speedily stood up, and, laying her hand on Mrs. Hsueeh, she turned her head round, and pointed at a large wooden box, in which old lady Chia usually deposited her money. 'Aunt,' she said, a smile curling her lips, 'look here! I couldn't tell you how much there is in that box that was won from me! This tiao will be wheedled by the cash in it, before we've played for half an hour! All we've got to do is to give them sufficient time to lure this string in as well; we needn't trouble to touch the cards. Your temper, worthy ancestor, will thus calm down. If you've also got any legitimate thing for me to do, you might bid me go and attend to it!'
This joke had scarcely been concluded than it evoked incessant laughter from dowager lady Chia and every one else. But while she was bandying words, P'ing Erh happened to bring her another string of cash prompted by the apprehension that her capital might not suffice to meet her wants.
'It's useless putting them in front of me!' lady Feng cried. 'Place these too over there by our old lady and let them be wheedled in along with the others! It will thus save trouble, as there won't be any need to make two jobs of them, to the inconvenience of the cash already in the box.'
Dowager lady Chia had a hearty laugh, so much so, that the cards, she held in her hand, flew all over the table; but pushing Yuean Yang. 'Be quick,' she shouted, 'and wrench that mouth of hers!'
P'ing Erh placed the cash according to her mistress' directions. But after indulging too in laughter for a time, she retraced her footsteps. On reaching the entrance into the court, she met Chia Lien. 'Where's your Madame Hsing?' he inquired. 'Mr. Chia She told me to ask her to go round.'
'She's been standing in there with our old mistress,' P'ing Erh hastily laughed, 'for ever so long, and yet she isn't inclined to budge! Seize the earliest opportunity you can get to wash your hands clean of this business! Our old lady has had a good long fit of fuming and raging. Luckily, our lady Secunda cracked an endless stock of jokes, so she, at length, got a bit calmer!'
'I'll go over,' Chia Lien said. 'All I have to do is to find out our venerable senior's wishes, as to whether she means to go to Lai Ta's house on the fourteenth, so that I might have time to get the chairs ready. As I'll be able to tell Madame Hsing to return, and have a share of the fun, won't it be well for me to go?'
'My idea is,' P'ing Erh suggested laughingly, 'that you shouldn't put your foot in there! Every one, even up to Madame Wang, and Pao-yue, have alike received a rap on the knuckles, and are you also going now to fill up the gap?'
'Everything is over long ago,' Chia Lien observed, 'and can it be that she'll cap the whole thing by blowing me up too? What's more, it's no concern of mine. In the next place, Mr. Chia She enjoined me that I was to go in person, and ask his wife round, so, if I at present depute some one else, and he comes to know about it, he really won't feel in a pleasant mood, and he'll take advantage of this pretext to give vent to his spite on me.'
These words over, he quickly marched off. And P'ing Erh was so impressed with the reasonableness of his arguments, that she followed in his track.
As soon as Chia Lien reached the reception hall, he trod with a light step. Then peeping in he saw Madame Hsing standing inside. Lady Feng, with her eagle eye, was the first to espy him. But she winked at him and dissuaded him from coming in, and next gave a wink to Madame Hsing. Madame Hsing could not conveniently get away at once, and she had to pour a cup of tea, and place it in front of dowager lady Chia. But old lady Chia jerked suddenly round, and took Chia Lien at such a disadvantage that he found it difficult to beat a retreat. 'Who is outside?' exclaimed old lady Chia. 'It seemed to me as if some servant-boy had poked his head in.'
Lady Feng sprung to her feet without delay. 'I also,' she interposed, 'indistinctly noticed the shadow of some one.'
Saying this, she walked away and quitted the room. Chia Lien entered with hasty step. Forcing a smile, 'I wanted to ask,' he remarked, 'whether you, venerable senior, are going out on the fourteenth, so that the chairs may be got ready.'
'In that case,' dowager lady Chia rejoined, 'why didn't you come straight in; but behaved again in that mysterious way?'
'I saw that you were playing at cards, dear ancestor,' Chia Lien explained with a strained laugh, 'and I didn't venture to come and disturb you. I therefore simply meant to call my wife out to find out from her.'
'Is it anything so very urgent that you had to say it this very moment?' old lady Chia continued. 'Had you waited until she had gone home, couldn't you have asked her any amount of questions you may have liked? When have you been so full of zeal before? I'm puzzled to know whether it isn't as an eavesdropping spirit that you appear on the scene; nor can I say whether you don't come as a spy. But that impish way of yours gave me quite a start! What a low-bred fellow you are! Your wife will play at cards with me for a good long while more, so you'd better bundle yourself home, and conspire again with Chao Erh's wife how to do away with your better half.'
Her remarks evoked general merriment.
'It's Pao Erh's wife,' Yuean Yang put in laughingly, 'and you, worthy senior, have dragged in again Chao Erh's wife.'
'Yes!' assented old lady Chia, likewise with a laugh. 'How could I remember whether he wasn't (pao) embracing her, or (pei) carrying her on his back. The bare mention of these things makes me lose all self-control and provokes me to anger! Ever since I crossed these doors as a great grandson's wife, I have never, during the whole of these fifty-four years, seen anything like these affairs, albeit it has been my share to go through great frights, great dangers, thousands of strange things and hundred and one remarkable occurrences! Don't you yet pack yourself off from my presence?'
Chia Lien could not muster courage to utter a single word to vindicate himself, but retired out of the room with all promptitude. P'ing Erh was standing outside the window. 'I gave you due warning in a gentle tone, but you wouldn't hear; you've, after all, rushed into the very meshes of the net!'
These reproaches were still being heaped on him when he caught sight of Madame Hsing, as she likewise made her appearance outside. 'My father,' Chia Lien ventured, 'is at the bottom of all this trouble; and the whole blame now is shoved upon your shoulders as well as mine, mother.'
'I'll take you, you unfilial thing and...' Madame Hsing shouted. 'People lay down their lives for their fathers; and you are prompted by a few harmless remarks to murmur against heaven and grumble against earth! Won't you behave in a proper manner? He's in high dudgeon these last few days, so mind he doesn't give you a pounding!'
