Pao-yue hastily attempted to bow. "I'm considerably better;" he said. "All I do," he went on, "is to disturb you, aunt, and you, my cousin, but I don't deserve such attentions."
Mrs. Hsueeh lost no time in supporting and laying him down. "Mind you tell me whatever may take your fancy!" she proceeded.
"If I do fancy anything," retorted Pao-yue smilingly, "I shall certainly send to you, aunt, for it."
"What would you like to eat," likewise inquired Madame Wang, "so that I may, on my return, send it round to you?"
"There's nothing that I care for," smiled Pao-yue, "though the soup made for me the other day, with young lotus leaves, and small lotus cores was, I thought, somewhat nice."
"From what I hear, its flavour is nothing very grand," lady Feng chimed in laughingly, from where she stood on one side. "It involves, however, a good deal of trouble to concoct; and here you deliberately go and fancy this very thing."
"Go and get it ready!" cried dowager lady Chia several successive times.
"Venerable ancestor," urged lady Feng with a smile, "don't you bother yourself about it! Let me try and remember who can have put the moulds away!" Then turning her head round, "Go and bid," she enjoined an old matron, "the chief in the cook-house go and apply for them!"
After a considerable lapse of time, the matron returned. "The chief in the cook-house," she explained, "says that the four sets of moulds for soups have all been handed up."
Upon hearing this, lady Feng thought again for a while. "Yes, I remember," she afterwards remarked, "they were handed up, but I can't recollect to whom they were given. Possibly they're in the tea-room."
Thereupon, she also despatched a servant to go and inquire of the keeper of the tea-room about them; but he too had not got them; and it was subsequently the butler, entrusted with the care of the gold and silver articles, who brought them round.
Mrs. Hsueeh was the first to take them and examine them. What, in fact, struck her gaze was a small box, the contents of which were four sets of silver moulds. Each of these was over a foot long, and one square inch (in breadth). On the top, holes were bored of the size of beans. Some resembled chrysanthemums, others plum blossom. Some were in the shape of lotus seed-cases, others like water chestnuts. They numbered in all thirty or forty kinds, and were ingeniously executed.
"In your mansion," she felt impelled to observe smilingly to old lady Chia and Madame Wang, "everything has been amply provided for! Have you got all these things to prepare a plate of soup with! Hadn't you told me, and I happened to see them, I wouldn't have been able to make out what they were intended for!"
Lady Feng did not allow time to any one to put in her word. "Aunt," she said, "how could you ever have divined that these were used last year for the imperial viands! They thought of a way by which they devised, somehow or other, I can't tell how, some dough shapes, which borrow a little of the pure fragrance of the new lotus leaves. But as all mainly depends upon the quality of the soup, they're not, after all, of much use! Yet who often goes in for such soup! It was made once only, and that at the time when the moulds were brought; and how is it that he has come to think of it to-day?" So speaking, she took (the moulds), and handed them to a married woman, to go and issue directions to the people in the cook-house to procure at once several fowls, and to add other ingredients besides and prepare ten bowls of soup.
"What do you want all that lot for?" observed Madame Wang.
"There's good reason for it," answered lady Feng. "A dish of this kind isn't, at ordinary times, very often made, and were, now that brother Pao-yue has alluded to it, only sufficient prepared for him, and none for you, dear senior, you, aunt, and you, Madame Wang, it won't be quite the thing! So isn't it better that this opportunity should be availed of to get ready a whole supply so that every one should partake of some, and that even I should, through my reliance on your kind favour, taste this novel kind of relish."
"You are sharper than a monkey!" Dowager lady Chia laughingly exclaimed in reply to her proposal. "You make use of public money to confer boons upon people."
This remark evoked general laughter.
"This is a mere bagatelle!" eagerly laughed lady Feng. "Even I can afford to stand you such a small treat!" Then turning her head round, "Tell them in the cook-house," she said to a married woman, "to please make an extra supply, and that they'll get the money from me."
The matron assented and went out of the room.
Pao-ch'ai, who was standing near, thereupon interposed with a smile. "During the few years that have gone by since I've come here, I've carefully noticed that sister-in-law Secunda, cannot, with all her acumen, outwit our venerable ancestor."
"My dear child!" forthwith replied old lady Chia at these words. "I'm now quite an old woman, and how can there still remain any wit in me! When I was, long ago, of your manlike cousin Feng's age, I had far more wits about me than she has! Albeit she now avers that she can't reach our standard, she's good enough; and compared with your aunt Wang, why, she's infinitely superior. Your aunt, poor thing, won't speak much! She's like a block of wood; and when with her father and mother-in-law, she won't show herself off to advantage. But that girl Feng has a sharp tongue, so is it a wonder if people take to her."
"From what you say," insinuated Pao-yue with a smile, "those who don't talk much are not loved."
"Those who don't speak much," resumed dowager lady Chia, "possess the endearing quality of reserve. But among those, with glib tongues, there's also a certain despicable lot; thus it's better, in a word, not to have too much to say for one's self."
"Quite so," smiled Pao-yue, "yet though senior sister-in-law Chia Chu doesn't, I must confess, talk much, you, venerable ancestor, treat her just as you do cousin Feng. But if you maintain that those alone, who can talk, are worthy of love, then among all these young ladies, sister Feng and cousin Lin are the only ones good enough to be loved."
"With regard to the young ladies," remarked dowager lady Chia, "it isn't that I have any wish to flatter your aunt Hsueeh in her presence, but it is a positive and incontestable fact that there isn't, beginning from the four girls in our household, a single one able to hold a candle to that girl Pao-ch'ai."
At these words, Mrs. Hsueeh promptly smiled. "Dear venerable senior!" she said, "you're rather partial in your verdict."
"Our dear senior," vehemently put in Madame Wang, also smiling, "has often told me in private how nice your daughter Pao-ch'ai is; so this is no lie."
Pao-yue had tried to lead old lady Chia on, originally with the idea of inducing her to speak highly of Lin Tai-yue, but when unawares she began to eulogise Pao-ch'ai instead the result exceeded all his thoughts and went far beyond his expectations. Forthwith he cast a glance at Pao-chai, and gave her a smile, but Pao-chai at once twisted her head round and went and chatted with Hsi Jen. But of a sudden, some one came to ask them to go and have their meal. Dowager lady Chia rose to her feet, and enjoined Pao-yue to be careful of himself. She then gave a few directions to the waiting-maids, and resting her weight on lady Feng's arm, and pressing Mrs. Hsueeh to go out first, she, and all with her, left the apartment in a body. But still she kept on inquiring whether the soup was ready or not. "If there's anything you might fancy to eat," she also said to Mrs. Hsueeh and the others, "mind you, come and tell me, and I know how to coax that hussey Feng to get it for you as well as me."
"My venerable senior!" rejoined Mrs. Hsueeh, "you do have the happy knack of putting her on her mettle; but though she has often got things ready for you, you've, after all, not eaten very much of them."
"Aunt," smiled lady Feng, "don't make such statements! If our worthy senior hasn't eaten me up it's purely and simply because she dislikes human flesh as being sour. Did she not look down upon it as sour, why, she would long ago have gobbled me up!"