"Where can I go?" exclaimed Pao-yue. "I'm quite surfeited with
everything."

"Once out you'll be all right," Hsi Jen answered, "but if you simply
give way to this languor, you'll be more than ever sick of everything at
heart."

Pao-yue could not do otherwise, dull and out of sorts though he was, than
accede to her importunities. Strolling leisurely out of the door of the
room, he amused himself a little with the birds suspended under the
verandah; then he wended his steps outside the court, and followed the
course of the Hsin Fang stream; but after admiring the golden fish for a
time, he espied, on the opposite hillock, two young deer come rushing
down as swift as an arrow. What they were up to Pao-yue could not
discern; but while abandoning himself to melancholy, he caught sight of
Chia Lan, following behind, with a small bow in his hand, and hurrying
down hill in pursuit of them.

As soon as he realised that Pao-yue stood ahead of him, he speedily
halted. "Uncle Secundus," he smiled, "are you at home? I imagined you
had gone out of doors!"

"You are up to mischief again, eh?" Pao-yue rejoined. "They've done
nothing to you, and why shoot at them with your arrows?"

"I had no studies to attend to just now, so, being free with nothing to
do," Chia Lan replied laughingly, "I was practising riding and archery."

"Shut up!" exclaimed Pao-yue. "When are you not engaged in practising?"