This observation sent the whole company into a violent fit of laughter.
Even Chia Chen could not suppress a smile.

"What a monkey!" dowager lady Chia exclaimed, turning her head round.
"What a monkey you are! Aren't you afraid of going down to that Hell,
where tongues are cut off?"

"I've got nothing to do with any men whatever," rejoined lady Feng
laughing, "and why does he time and again tell me that it's my bounden
duty to lay up a store of meritorious deeds; and that if I'm remiss, my
life will be short?"

Chang, the Taoist, indulged in further laughter. "I brought out," he
explained, "the tray so as to kill two birds with one stone. It wasn't,
however, to beg for donations. On the contrary, it was in order to put
in it the jade, which I meant to ask Mr. Pao to take off, so as to carry
it outside and let all those Taoist friends of mine, who come from far
away, as well as my neophytes and the young apprentices, see what it's
like."

"Well, since that be the case," added old lady Chia, "why do you, at
your age, try your strength by running about the whole day long? Take
him at once along and let them see it! But were you to have called him
in there, wouldn't it have saved a lot of trouble?"

"Your venerable ladyship," resumed Chang, the Taoist, "isn't aware that
though I be, to look at, a man of eighty, I, after all, continue, thanks
to your protection, my dowager lady, quite hale and strong. In the
second place, there are crowds of people in the outer rooms; and the