'It's quite true that his mother is sick,' Chou Jui's wife interceded; 'so, Miss, do say yes to him also, and let him go!'
'Be back as soon as it dawns to-morrow!' P'ing Erh enjoined. 'Wait, I've got something for you to do, for you'll again sleep away, and only turn up after the sun has blazed away on your buttocks. As you go now, give a message to Wang Erh! Tell him that our lady bade you warn him that if he does not hand over the balance of the interest due by to-morrow, she won't have anything to do with him. So he'd better let her have it to meet her requirements and finish.'
The servant-lad felt in high glee and exuberant spirits. Expressing his obedience, he walked off.
P'ing Erh and her companions repaired then to old lady Chia's apartments. Here the various young ladies from the Garden of Broad Vista were at the time assembled paying their respects to their grandmother. As soon as old goody Liu put her foot inside, she saw the room thronged with girls (as seductive) as twigs of flowers waving to and fro, and so richly dressed, as to look enveloped in pearls, and encircled with king-fisher ornaments. But she could not make out who they all were. Her gaze was, however, attracted by an old dame, reclining alone on a divan. Behind her sat a girl, a regular beauty, clothed in gauze, engaged in patting her legs. Lady Feng was on her feet in the act of cracking some joke.
Old goody Liu readily concluded that it must be dowager lady Chia, so promptly pressing forward, she put on a forced smile and made several curtseys. 'My obeisance to you, star of longevity!' she said.
Old lady Chia hastened, on her part, to bow and to inquire after her health. Then she asked Chou Jui's wife to bring a chair over for her to take a seat. But Pan Erh was still so very shy that he did not know how to make his obeisance.
'Venerable relative,' dowager lady Chia asked, 'how old are you this year?'
Old goody Liu immediately rose to her feet. 'I'm seventy-five this year,' she rejoined.
'So old and yet so hardy!' Old lady Chia remarked, addressing herself to the party. 'Why she's older than myself by several years! When I reach that age, I wonder whether I shall be able to move!'
'We people have,' old goody Liu smilingly resumed, 'to put up, from the moment we come into the world, with ever so many hardships; while your venerable ladyship enjoys, from your birth, every kind of blessing! Were we also like this, there'd be no one to carry on that farming work.'
'Are your eyes and teeth still good?' Dowager lady Chia went on to inquire.
'They're both still all right,' old goody Liu replied. 'The left molars, however, have got rather shaky this year.'
'As for me, I'm quite an old fossil,' dowager lady Chia observed. 'I'm no good whatever. My eyesight is dim; my ears are deaf, my memory is gone. I can't even recollect any of you, old family connections. When therefore any of our relations come on a visit, I don't see them for fear lest I should be ridiculed. All I can manage to eat are a few mouthfuls of anything tender enough for my teeth; and I can just dose a bit or, when I feel in low spirits, I distract myself a little with these grandsons and grand-daughters of mine; that's all I'm good for.'
'This is indeed your venerable ladyship's good fortune!' old goody Liu smiled. 'We couldn't enjoy anything of the kind, much though we may long for it.'
'What good fortune!' dowager lady Chia exclaimed. 'I'm a useless old thing, no more.'
This remark made every one explode into laughter.
Dowager lady Chia also laughed. 'I heard our lady Feng say a little while back,' she added, 'that you had brought a lot of squash and vegetables, and I told her to put them by at once. I had just been craving to have newly-grown melons and vegetables; but those one buys outside are not as luscious as those produced in your farms.'
'This is the rustic notion,' old goody Liu laughed, 'to entirely subsist on fresh things! Yet, we long to have fish and meat for our fare, but we can't afford it.'
'I've found a relative in you to-day,' dowager lady Chia said, 'so you shouldn't go empty-handed! If you don't despise this place as too mean, do stay a day or two before you start! We've also got a garden here; and this garden produces fruits too; you can taste some of them to-morrow and take a few along with you home, in order to make it look like a visit to relatives.'
When lady Feng saw how delighted old lady Chia was with the prospects of the old dame's stay, she too lost no time in doing all she could to induce her to remain. 'Our place here,' she urged, 'isn't, it's true, as spacious as your threshing-floor; but as we've got two vacant rooms, you'd better put up in them for a couple of days, and choose some of your village news and old stories and recount them to our worthy senior.'
'Now you, vixen Feng,' smiled dowager lady Chia, 'don't raise a laugh at her expense! She's only a country woman; and will an old dame like her stand any chaff from you?'
While remonstrating with her, she bade a servant go, before attending to anything else, and pluck a few fruits. These she handed to Pan Erh to eat. But Pan Erh did not venture to touch them, conscious as he was of the presence of such a number of bystanders. So old lady Chia gave orders that a few cash should be given him, and then directed the pages to take him outside to play.
After sipping a cup of tea, old goody Liu began to relate, for the benefit of dowager lady Chia, a few of the occurrences she had seen or heard of in the country. These had the effect of putting old lady Chia in a more exuberant frame of mind. But in the midst of her narration, a servant, at lady Feng's instance, asked goody Liu to go and have her evening meal. Dowager lady Chia then picked out, as well, several kinds of eatables from her own repast, and charged some one to take them to goody Liu to feast on.
But the consciousness that the old dame had taken her senior's fancy induced lady Feng to send her back again as soon as she had taken some refreshments. On her arrival, Yuean Yang hastily deputed a matron to take goody Liu to have a bath. She herself then went and selected two pieces of ordinary clothes, and these she entrusted to a servant to hand to the old dame to change. Goody Liu had hitherto not set eyes upon any such grand things, so with eagerness she effected the necessary alterations in her costume. This over, she made her appearance outside, and, sitting in front of the divan occupied by dowager lady Chia, she went on to narrate as many stories as she could recall to mind. Pao-yue and his cousins too were, at the time, assembled in the room, and as they had never before heard anything the like of what she said, they, of course, thought her tales more full of zest than those related by itinerant blind story-tellers.
Old goody Liu was, albeit a rustic person, gifted by nature with a good deal of discrimination. She was besides advanced in years; and had gone through many experiences in her lifetime, so when she, in the first place, saw how extremely delighted old lady Chia was with her, and, in the second, how eager the whole crowd of young lads and lasses were to listen to what fell from her mouth, she even invented, when she found her own stock exhausted, a good many yarns to recount to them.
'What with all the sowing we have to do in our fields and the vegetables we have to plant,' she consequently proceeded, 'have we ever in our village any leisure to sit with lazy hands from year to year and day to day; no matter whether it's spring, summer, autumn or winter, whether it blows or whether it rains? Yea, day after day all that we can do is to turn the bare road into a kind of pavilion to rest and cool ourselves on! But what strange things don't we see! Last winter, for instance, snow fell for several consecutive days, and it piled up on the ground three or four feet deep. One day, I got up early, but I hadn't as yet gone out of the door of our house when I heard outside the noise of firewood (being moved). I fancied that some one must have come to steal it, so I crept up to a hole in the window; but, lo, I discovered that it was no one from our own village.'
'It must have been,' interposed dowager lady Chia, 'some wayfarers, who being smitten with the cold, took some of the firewood, they saw ready at hand, to go and make a fire and warm themselves with! That's highly probable!'
'It was no wayfarers at all,' old goody Liu retorted smiling, 'and that's what makes the story so strange. Who do you think it was, venerable star of longevity? It was really a most handsome girl of seventeen or eighteen, whose hair was combed as smooth as if oil had been poured over it. She was dressed in a deep red jacket, a white silk petticoat....'
When she reached this part of her narrative, suddenly became audible the voices of people bawling outside. 'It's nothing much,' they shouted, 'don't frighten our old mistress!' Dowager lady Chia and the other inmates caught, however, their cries and hurriedly inquired what had happened. A servant-maid explained in reply that a fire had broken out in the stables in the southern court, but that there was no danger, as the flames had been suppressed.
Their old grandmother was a person with very little nerve. The moment, therefore, the report fell on her car,
