"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."