herself of the remainder of her habiliments.

Tzu Chuean and Hsueeh Yen were well aware, from the experience they had
reaped in past days, that Lin Tai-yue was, in the absence of anything to
occupy her mind, prone to sit and mope, and that if she did not frown
her eyebrows, she anyway heaved deep sighs; but they were quite at a
loss to divine why she was, with no rhyme or reason, ever so ready to
indulge, to herself, in inexhaustible gushes of tears. At first, there
were such as still endeavoured to afford her solace; or who, suspecting
lest she brooded over the memory of her father and mother, felt
home-sick, or aggrieved, through some offence given her, tried by every
persuasion to console and cheer her; but, as contrary to all
expectations, she subsequently persisted time and again in this dull
mood, through each succeeding month and year, people got accustomed to
her eccentricities and did not extend to her the least sympathy. Hence
it was that no one (on this occasion) troubled her mind about her, but
letting her sit and sulk to her heart's content, they one and all turned
in and went to sleep.

Lin Tai-yue leaned against the railing of the bed, clasping her knees
with both hands, her eyes suffused with tears. She looked, in very
truth, like a carved wooden image or one fashioned of mud. There she sat
straight up to the second watch, even later, when she eventually fell
asleep.

The whole night nothing remarkable transpired. The morrow was the 26th
day of the fourth moon. Indeed on this day, at one p.m., commenced the
season of the 'Sprouting seeds,' and, according to an old custom, on the
day on which this feast of 'Sprouting seeds' fell, every one had to lay
all kinds of offerings and sacrificial viands on the altar of the god of