your very face! The other day you even beat Hsi Jen and here you are
again now finding fault with us! If you feel disposed to kick or strike
us, you are at liberty, Sir, to do so at your pleasure; but for a fan to
slip on the ground is an everyday occurrence! How many of those crystal
jars and cornelian bowls were smashed the other time, I don't remember,
and yet you were not seen to fly into a tantrum; and now, for a fan do
you distress yourself so? What's the use of it? If you dislike us, well
pack us off and select some good girls to serve you, and we will quietly
go away. Won't this be better?"

This rejoinder so exasperated Pao-yue that his whole frame trembled
violently. "You needn't be in a hurry!" he then shouted. "There will be
a day of parting by and bye."

Hsi Jen was on the other side, and from an early period she listened to
the conversation between them. Hurriedly crossing over, "what are you up
to again?" she said to Pao-yue, "why, there's nothing to put your monkey
up! I'm perfectly right in my assertion that when I'm away for any
length of time, something is sure to happen."

Ch'ing Wen heard these remarks. "Sister," she interposed smiling
ironically, "since you've got the gift of the gab, you should have come
at once; you would then have spared your master his fit of anger. It's
you who have from bygone days up to the present waited upon master;
we've never had anything to do with attending on him; and it's because
you've served him so faithfully that he repaid you yesterday with a kick
on the stomach. But who knows what punishment mayn't be in store for us,
who aren't fit to wait upon him decently!"

At these insinuations, Hsi Jen felt both incensed and ashamed. She was