"'When a host is courteous, visitors come often,'" smiled Hsiang-yuen,
"so it's surely because you possess certain qualities, which have won
his regard, that he insists upon seeing you."

"But I am not what one would call courteous," demurred Pao-yue. "I am, of
all coarse people, the coarsest. Besides, I do not choose to have any
relations with such people as himself."

"Here's again that unchangeable temperament of yours!" laughed
Hsiang-yuen. "But you're a big fellow now, and you should at least, if
you be loth to study and go and pass your examinations for a provincial
graduate or a metropolitan graduate, have frequent intercourse with
officers and ministers of state and discuss those varied attainments,
which one acquires in an official career, so that you also may be able
in time to have some idea about matters in general; and that when by and
bye you've made friends, they may not see you spending the whole day
long in doing nothing than loafing in our midst, up to every imaginable
mischief."

"Miss," exclaimed Pao-yue, after this harangue, "pray go and sit in some
other girl's room, for mind one like myself may contaminate a person who
knows so much of attainments and experience as you do."

"Miss," ventured Hsi Jen, "drop this at once! Last time Miss Pao too
tendered him this advice, but without troubling himself as to whether
people would feel uneasy or not, he simply came out with an ejaculation
of 'hai,' and rushed out of the place. Miss Pao hadn't meanwhile
concluded her say, so when she saw him fly, she got so full of shame
that, flushing scarlet, she could neither open her lips, nor hold her