"O-mi-to-fu!" exclaimed Madame Wang, after listening to him throughout.
"That will never do, and what an arduous job to uselessly saddle one's
self with; for even though there be interred in some graves people,
who've been dead for several hundreds of years, it wouldn't be a
propitious thing were their corpses turned topsy-turvey now and the
bones abstracted; just for the sake of preparing some medicine or
other."

Pao-yue thereupon addressed himself to Tai-yue. "Have you heard what was
said or not?" he asked. "And is there, pray, any likelihood that cousin
Secunda would also follow in my lead and tell lies?"

While saying this, his eyes were, albeit his face was turned towards Lin
Tai-yue, fixed upon Pao-ch'ai.

Lin Tai-yue pulled Madame Wang. "You just listen to him, aunt," she
observed. "All because cousin Pao-ch'ai would not accommodate him by
lying, he appeals to me."

"Pao-yue has a great knack," Madame Wang said, "of dealing contemptuously
with you, his cousin."

"Mother," Pao-yue smilingly protested, "you are not aware how the case
stands. When cousin Pao-ch'ai lived at home, she knew nothing whatever
about my elder cousin Hsueeh P'an's affairs, and how much less now that
she has taken up her quarters inside the garden? She, of course, knows
less than ever about them! Yet, cousin Lin just now stealthily treated
my statements as lies, and put me to the blush."

These words were still on his lips, when they perceived a waiting-maid,