But while she spoke, she saw Chui Erh also slowly enter the room.
'Look at this vixen!' Ch'ing Wen shouted. 'If I don't ask for her, she won't come. Had there been any monthly allowances issued and fruits distributed here, you would have been the first to run in! But approach a bit! Am I tigress to gobble you up?'
Chui Erh was under the necessity of advancing a few steps nearer to her. But, all of a sudden, Ch'ing Wen stooped forward, and with a dash clutching her hand, she took a long pin from the side of her pillow, and pricked it at random all over.
'What's the use of such paws?' she railed at her. 'They don't ply a needle, and they don't touch any thread! All you're good for is to prig things to stuff that mouth of yours with! The skin of your phiz is shallow and those paws of yours are light! But with the shame you bring upon yourself before the world, isn't it right that I should prick you, and make mincemeat of you?'
Chui Erh shouted so wildly from pain that She Yueh stepped forward and immediately drew them apart. She then pressed Ch'ing Wen, until she induced her to lie down.
'You're just perspiring,' she remarked, 'and here you are once more bent upon killing yourself. Wait until you are yourself again! Won't you then be able to give her as many blows as you may like? What's the use of kicking up all this fuss just now?'
Ch'ing Wen bade a servant tell nurse Sung to come in. 'Our master Secundus, Mr. Pao-yue, recently asked me to tell you,' she remarked on her arrival, 'that Chui Erh is very lazy. He himself gives her orders to her very face, but she is ever ready to raise objections and not to budge. Even when Hsi Jen bids her do things, she vilifies her behind her back. She must absolutely therefore be packed off to-day. And if Mr. Pao himself lays the matter to- morrow before Madame Wang, things will be square.'
After listening to her grievances, nurse Sung readily concluded in her mind that the affair of the bracelet had come to be known. 'What you suggest is well and good, it's true,' she consequently smiled, 'but it's as well to wait until Miss Hua (flower) returns and hears about the things. We can then give her the sack.'
'Mr. Pao-yue urgently enjoined this to-day,' Ch'ing Wen pursued, 'so what about Miss Hua (flower) and Miss Ts'ao (grass)? We've, of course, gob rules of propriety here, so you just do as I tell you; and be quick and send for some one from her house to come and fetch her away!'
'Well, now let's drop this!' She Yueeh interposed. 'Whether she goes soon or whether she goes late is one and the same thing; so let them take her away soon; we'll then be the sooner clear of her.'
At these words, nurse Sung had no alternative but to step out, and to send for her mother. When she came, she got ready all her effects, and then came to see Ch'ing Wen and the other girls. 'Young ladies,' she said, 'what's up? If your niece doesn't behave as she ought to, why, call her to account. But why banish her from this place? You should, indeed, leave us a little face!'
'As regards what you say,' Ch'ing Wen put in, 'wait until Pao-yue comes, and then we can ask him. It's nothing to do with us.'
The woman gave a sardonic smile. 'Have I got the courage to ask him?' she answered. 'In what matter doesn't he lend an ear to any settlement you, young ladies, may propose? He invariably agrees to all you say! But if you, young ladies, aren't agreeable, it's really of no avail. When you, for example, spoke just now,-it's true it was on the sly,-you called him straightway by his name, miss. This thing does very well with you, young ladies, but were we to do anything of the kind, we'd be looked upon as very savages!'
Ch'ing Wen, upon hearing her remark, became more than ever exasperated, and got crimson in the face. 'Yes, I called him by his name,' she rejoined, 'so you'd better go and report me to our old lady and Madame Wang. Tell them I'm a rustic and let them send me too off.'
'Sister-in-law,' urged She Yueeh, 'just you take her away; and if you've got aught to say, you can say it by and bye. Is this a place for you to bawl in and to try and explain what is right? Whom have you seen discourse upon the rules of propriety with us? Not to speak of you, sister-in-law, even Mrs. Lai Ta and Mrs. Lin treat us fairly well. And as for calling him by name, why, from days of yore to the very present, our dowager mistress has invariably bidden us do so. You yourselves are well aware of it. So much did she fear that it would be a difficult job to rear him that she deliberately wrote his infant name on slips of paper and had them stuck everywhere and anywhere with the design that one and all should call him by it. And this in order that it might exercise a good influence upon his bringing up. Even water-coolies and scavenger-coolies indiscriminately address him by his name; and how much more such as we? So late, in fact, as yesterday Mrs. Lin gave him but once the title of 'Sir,' and our old mistress called even her to task. This is one side of the question. In the next place, we all have to go and make frequent reports to our venerable dowager lady and Madame Wang, and don't we with them allude to him by name in what we have to say? Is it likely we'd also style him 'Sir?' What day is there that we don't utter the two words 'Pao-yue' two hundred times? And is it for you, sister-in-law, to come and pick out this fault? But in a day or so, when you've leisure to go to our old mistress' and Madame Wang's, you'll hear us call him by name in their very presence, and then you'll feel convinced. You've never, sister-in-law, had occasion to fulfil any honourable duties by our old lady and our lady. From one year's end to the other, all you do is to simply loaf outside the third door. So it's no matter of surprise, if you don't happen to know anything of the customs which prevail with us inside. But this isn't a place where you, sister-in-law, can linger for long. In another moment, there won't be any need for us to say anything; for some one will be coming to ask you what you want, and what excuse will you be able to plead? So take her away and let Mrs. Lin know about it; and commission her to come and find our Mr. Secundus and tell him all. There are in this establishment over a thousand inmates; one comes and another comes, so that though we know people and inquire their names, we can't nevertheless imprint them clearly on our minds.'
At the close of this long rigmarole, she at once told a young maid to take the mop and wash the floors.
The woman listened patiently to her arguments, but she could find no words to say anything to her by way of reply. Nor did she have the audacity to protract her stay. So flying into a huff, she took Chui Erh along with her, and there and then made her way out.
'Is it likely,' nurse Sung hastily observed, 'that a dame like you doesn't know what manners mean? Your daughter has been in these rooms for some time, so she should, when she is about to go, knock her head before the young ladies. She has no other means of showing her gratitude. Not that they care much about such things. Yet were she to simply knock her head, she would acquit herself of a duty, if nothing more. But how is it that she says I'm going, and off she forthwith rushes?'
Chui Erh overheard these words, and felt under the necessity of turning back. Entering therefore the apartment, she prostrated herself before the two girls, and then she went in quest of Ch'iu Wen and her companions, but neither did they pay any notice whatever to her.
'Hai!' ejaculated the woman, and heaving a sigh-for she did not venture to utter a word,-she walked off, fostering a grudge in her heart.
Ch'ing Wen had, while suffering from a cold, got into a fit of anger into the bargain, so instead of being better, she was worse, and she tossed and rolled until the time came for lighting the lamps. But the moment she felt more at ease, she saw Pao-yue come back. As soon as he put his foot inside the door, he gave way to an exclamation, and stamped his foot.
'What's the reason of such behaviour?' She Yueeh promptly asked him.
'My old grandmother,' Pao-yue explained, 'was in such capital spirits that she gave me this coat to-day; but, who'd have thought it, I inadvertently burnt part of the back lapel. Fortunately however the evening was advanced so that neither she nor my mother noticed what had happened.'
Speaking the while, he took it off. She Yueeh, on inspection, found indeed a hole burnt in it of the size of a finger. 'This,' she said, 'must have been done by some spark from the hand-stove. It's of no consequence.'
Immediately she called a servant to her. 'Take this out on the sly,' she bade her, 'and let an experienced weaver patch it. It will be all right then.'
So saying, she packed it up in a wrapper, and a nurse carried it outside.
'It should be ready by daybreak,' she urged. 'And by no means let our old lady or Madame Wang know anything about it.'
The matron brought it back again, after a protracted absence. 'Not only,' she explained; 'have weavers, first-class tailors, and embroiderers, but even those, who do women's work, been asked about it, and they all have no idea what this is made of. None of them therefore will venture to undertake the job.'
'What's to be done?' She Yueeh inquired. 'But it won't matter if you don't wear it to-morrow.'
'To-morrow is the very day of the anniversary,' Pao-yue rejoined. 'Grandmother and my mother bade me put
