outside. "Couldn't you wait even so much as to conclude what you had to
say, but flew off at once? Who is steaming bread and waiting for you? Or
are you afraid, forsooth, lest it should get cold?"

"They belong to sister Ch'i," the young servant-girl merely returned for
answer from outside the window; and raising her feet high, she ran
tramp-tramp on her way back again.

Hsiao Hung lost control over her temper, and snatching the designs, she
flung them on one side. She then rummaged in a drawer for a pencil, but
finding, after a prolonged search, that they were all blunt; "Where did
I," she thereupon ejaculated, "put that brand-new pencil the other day?
How is it I can't remember where it is?"

While she soliloquised, she became wrapt in thought. After some
reflection she, at length, gave a smile. "Of course!" she exclaimed,
"the other evening Ying Erh took it away." And turning towards Chia Hui,
"Fetch it for me," she shouted.

"Sister Hua," Chia Hui rejoined, "is waiting for me to get a box for
her, so you had better go for it yourself!"

"What!" remarked Hsiao Hung, "she's waiting for you, and are you still
squatting here chatting leisurely? Hadn't it been that I asked you to go
and fetch it, she too wouldn't have been waiting for you; you most
perverse vixen!"

With these words on her lips, she herself walked out of the room, and
leaving the I Hung court, she straightway proceeded in the direction of
Pao-ch'ai's court. As soon, however, as she reached the Hsin Fang