the more moved to anger. Without even asking who it was, she rapidly
bawled out: "They've all gone to sleep; you'd better come to-morrow."

Lin Tai-yue was well aware of the natural peculiarities of the
waiting-maids, and of their habit of playing practical jokes upon each
other, so fearing that the girl in the inner room had failed to
recognise her voice, and had refused to open under the misconception
that it was some other servant-girl, she gave a second shout in a higher
pitch. "It's I!" she cried, "don't you yet open the gate?"

Ch'ing Wen, as it happened, did not still distinguish her voice; and in
an irritable strain, she rejoined: "It's no matter who you may be; Mr.
Secundus has given orders that no one at all should be allowed to come
in."

As these words reached Lin Tai-yue's ear, she unwittingly was overcome
with indignation at being left standing outside. But when on the point
of raising her voice to ask her one or two things, and to start a
quarrel with her; "albeit," she again argued mentally, "I can call this
my aunt's house, and it should be just as if it were my own, it's, after
all, a strange place, and now that my father and mother are both dead,
and that I am left with no one to rely upon, I have for the present to
depend upon her family for a home. Were I now therefore to give way to a
regular fit of anger with her, I'll really get no good out of it."

While indulging in reflection, tears trickled from her eyes. But just as
she was feeling unable to retrace her steps, and unable to remain
standing any longer, and quite at a loss what to do, she overheard the
sound of jocular language inside, and listening carefully, she
discovered that it was, indeed, Pao-yue and Pao-ch'ai. Lin Tai-yue waxed