'What nonsense you're talking!' she then exclaimed. 'Those people are all divines, and where could they have rummaged up these things? But what need is there for any such presents? He may, on no account, accept them.'
'These are intended as a small token of their esteem,' responded Chang, the Taoist, smiling, 'your servant cannot therefore venture to interfere with them. If your venerable ladyship will not keep them, won't you make it patent to them that I'm treated contemptuously, and unlike what one should be, who has joined the order through your household?'
Only when old lady Chia heard these arguments did she direct a servant to receive the presents.
'Venerable senior,' Pao-yue smilingly chimed in. 'After the reasons advanced by grandfather Chang, we cannot possibly refuse them. But albeit I feel disposed to keep these things, they are of no avail to me; so would it not be well were a servant told to carry the tray and to follow me out of doors, that I may distribute them to the poor?
'You are perfectly right in what you say!' smiled dowager lady Chia.
The Taoist Chang, however, went on speedily to use various arguments to dissuade him. 'Mr. Pao,' he observed, 'your intention is, it is true, to perform charitable acts; but though you may aver that these things are of little value, you'll nevertheless find among them several articles you might turn to some account. Were you to let the beggars have them, why they will, first of all, be none the better for them; and, next, it will contrariwise be tantamount to throwing them away! If you want to distribute anything among the poor, why don't you dole out cash to them?'
'Put them by!' promptly shouted Pao-yue, after this rejoinder, 'and when evening comes, take a few cash and distribute them.'
These directions given, Chang, the Taoist, retired out of the place.
Dowager lady Chia and her companions thereupon walked upstairs and sat in the main part of the building. Lady Feng and her friends adjourned into the eastern part, while the waiting-maids and servants remained in the western portion, and took their turns in waiting on their mistresses.
Before long, Chia Chen came back. 'The plays,' he announced, 'have been chosen by means of slips picked out before the god. The first one on the list is the 'Record of the White Snake.''
'Of what kind of old story does 'the record of the white snake,' treat?' old lady Chia inquired.
'The story about Han Kao-tsu,' replied Chia Chen, 'killing a snake and then ascending the throne. The second play is, 'the Bed covered with ivory tablets.''
'Has this been assigned the second place?' asked dowager lady Chia. 'Yet never mind; for as the gods will it thus, there is no help than not to demur. But what about the third play?' she went on to inquire.
'The Nan Ko dream is the third,' Chia Chen answered.
This response elicited no comment from dowager lady Chia. Chia Chen therefore withdrew downstairs, and betook himself outside to make arrangements for the offerings to the gods, for the paper money and eatables that had to be burnt, and for the theatricals about to begin. So we will leave him without any further allusion, and take up our narrative with Pao-yue.
Seating himself upstairs next to old lady Chia, he called to a servant-girl to fetch the tray of presents given to him a short while back, and putting on his own trinket of jade, he fumbled about with the things for a bit, and picking up one by one, he handed them to his grandmother to admire. But old lady Chia espied among them a unicorn, made of purplish gold, with kingfisher feathers inserted, and eagerly extending her arm, she took it up. 'This object,' she smiled, 'seems to me to resemble very much one I've seen worn also by the young lady of some household or other of ours.'
'Senior cousin, Shih Hsiang-yuen,' chimed in Pao-ch'ai, a smile playing on her lips, 'has one, but it's a trifle smaller than this.'
'Is it indeed Yuen-erh who has it?' exclaimed old lady Chia.
'Now that she lives in our house,' remarked Pao-yue, 'how is it that even I haven't seen anything of it?'
'Cousin Pao-ch'ai,' rejoined T'an Ch'un laughingly, 'has the power of observation; no matter what she sees, she remembers.'
Lin Tai-yue gave a sardonic smile. 'As far as other matters are concerned,' she insinuated, 'her observation isn't worth speaking of; where she's extra-observant is in articles people may wear about their persons.'
Pao-chai, upon catching this sneering remark, at once turned her head round, and pretended she had not heard. But as soon as Pao-yue learnt that Shih Hsiang-yuen possessed a similar trinket, he speedily picked up the unicorn, and hid it in his breast, indulging, at the same time, in further reflection. Yet, fearing lest people might have noticed that he kept back that particular thing the moment he discovered that Shih Hsiang-yuen had one identical with it, he fixed his eyes intently upon all around while clutching it. He found however that not one of them was paying any heed to his movements except Lin Tai-yue, who, while gazing at him was, nodding her head, as if with the idea of expressing her admiration. Pao-yue, therefore, at once felt inwardly ill at ease, and pulling out his hand, he observed, addressing himself to Tai-yue with an assumed smile, 'This is really a fine thing to play with; I'll keep it for you, and when we get back home, I'll pass a ribbon through it for you to wear.' 'I don't care about it,' said Lin Tai-yue, giving her head a sudden twist.
'Well,' continued Pao-yue laughingly, 'if you don't like it, I can't do otherwise than keep it myself.'
Saying this, he once again thrust it away. But just as he was about to open his lips to make some other observation, he saw Mrs. Yu, the spouse of Chia Chen, arrive along with the second wife recently married by Chia Jung, that is, his mother and her daughter-in-law, to pay their obeisance to dowager lady Chia.
'What do you people rush over here for again?' old lady Chia inquired.
'I came here for a turn, simply because I had nothing to do.'
But no sooner was this inquiry concluded than they heard a messenger announce: 'that some one had come from the house of general Feng.'
The family of Feng Tzu-ying had, it must be explained, come to learn the news that the inmates of the Chia mansion were offering a thanksgiving service in the temple, and, without loss of time, they got together presents of pigs, sheep, candles, tea and eatables and sent them over. The moment lady Feng heard about it she hastily crossed to the main part of the two-storied building. 'Ai-ya;' she ejaculated, clapping her hands and laughing. 'I never expected anything of the sort; we merely said that we ladies were coming for a leisurely stroll and people imagined that we were spreading a sumptuous altar with lenten viands and came to bring us offerings! But it's all our old lady's fault for bruiting it about! Why, we haven't even got any slips of paper with tips ready.'
She had just finished speaking, when she perceived two matrons, who acted as house-keepers in the Feng family, walk upstairs. But before the Feng servants could take their leave, presents likewise arrived, in quick succession, from Chao, the Vice-President of the Board. In due course, one lot of visitors followed another. For as every one got wind of the fact that the Chia family was having thanksgiving services, and that the ladies were in the temple, distant and close relatives, friends, old friends and acquaintances all came to present their contributions. So much so, that dowager lady Chia began at this juncture to feel sorry that she had ever let the cat out of the bag. 'This is no regular fasting,' she said, 'we simply have come for a little change; and we should not have put any one to any inconvenience!' Although therefore she was to have remained present all day at the theatrical performance, she promptly returned home soon after noon, and the next day she felt very loth to go out of doors again.
'By striking the wall, we've also stirred up dust,' lady Feng argued. 'Why we've already put those people to the trouble so we should only be too glad to-day to have another outing.'
But as when dowager lady Chia interviewed the Taoist Chang, the previous day, he made allusion to Pao-yue and canvassed his engagement, Pao-yue experienced, little as one would have thought it, much secret displeasure during the whole of that day, and on his return home he flew into a rage and abused Chang, the rationalistic priest, for harbouring designs to try and settle a match for him. At every breath and at every word he resolved that henceforward he would not set eyes again upon the Taoist Chang. But no one but himself had any idea of the reason that actuated him to absent himself. In the next place, Lin Tai-yue began also, on her return the day before, to ail from a touch of the sun, so their grandmother was induced by these two considerations to remain firm in her decision not to go. When lady Feng, however, found that she would not join them, she herself took charge of the family party and set out on the excursion.
But without descending to particulars, let us advert to Pao-yue. Seeing that Lin Tai-yue had fallen ill, he was so full of solicitude on her account that he even had little thought for any of his meals, and not long elapsed before he came to inquire how she was.
