g an original and seasonable ballad, while over the heel taps, to make allusion to some object on the table, and devise something with some old poetical lines or ancient scrolls, from the Four Books or the Five Classics, or with some set phrases."

Hsüeh P'an gave him no time to finish. He was the first to stand up and prevent him from proceeding. "I won't join you, so don't count me; this is, in fact, done in order to play tricks upon me."

Yün Erh, however, also rose to her feet and shoved him down into his seat.

"What are you in such a funk for?" she laughed. "You're fortunate enough to be able to drink wine daily, and can't you, forsooth, even come up to me? Yet I mean to recite, by and bye, my own share. If you say what's right, well and good; if you don't, you will simply have to swallow several cups of wine as a forfeit, and is it likely you'll die from drunkenness? Are you, pray, going now to disregard this rule and to drink, instead, ten large cups; besides going down to pour the wine?"

One and all clapped in applause. "Well said!" they shouted.

After this, Hüeh P'an had no way out of it and felt compelled to resume his seat.

They then heard Pao-yü recite:

A girl is sad,

When her spring-time of life is far advanced and she still occupies a

vacant inner-room.

A girl feels wounded in her heart,

When she regrets having allowed her better half to go abroad and win a

marquisdom.

A girl is glad,

When looking in the mirror, at the time of her morning toilette, she

finds her colour fair.

A girl is joyful,

What time she sits on the frame of a gallows-swing, clad in a thin

spring gown.

Having listened to him, "Capital!" one and all cried out in a chorus. Hsüeh P'an alone raised his face, shook his head and remarked: "It isn't good, he must be fined."

"Why should he be fined?" demurred the party.

"Because," retorted Hsüeh P'an, "what he says is entirely unintelligible to me. So how can he not be fined?"

Yün Erh gave him a pinch.—"Just you quietly think of yours," she laughed; "for if by and bye you are not ready you'll also have to bear a fine."

In due course Pao-yü took up the guitar. He was heard to sing:

"When mutual thoughts arise, tears, blood-stained, endless drop, like

lentiles sown broadcast.

In spring, in ceaseless bloom nourish willows and flowers around the

painted tower.

Inside the gauze-lattice peaceful sleep flies, when, after dark, come

wind and rain.

Both new-born sorrows and long-standing griefs cannot from memory ever

die!

E'en jade-fine rice, and gold-like drinks they make hard to go down;

they choke the throat.

The lass has not the heart to desist gazing in the glass at her wan

face.

Nothing can from that knitted brow of hers those frowns dispel;

For hard she finds it patient to abide till the clepsydra will have

run its course.

Alas! how fitly like the faint outline of a green hill which nought

can screen;

Or like a green-tinged stream, which ever ceaseless floweth onward far

and wide!"

When the song drew to an end, his companions with one voice cried out:

"Excellent!"

Hsüeh P'an was the only one to find fault. "There's no metre in them," he said.

Pao-yü quaffed the "opening cup," then seizing a pear, he added:

"While the rain strikes the pear-blossom I firmly close the door,"

and thus accomplished the requirements of the rule.

Feng Tzu-ying's turn came next.

"A maid is glad."

he commenced:

When at her first confinement she gives birth to twins, both sons.

A maid is joyful,

When on the sly she to the garden creeps crickets to catch.

A maid is sad,

When her husband some sickness gets and lies in a bad state.

A maiden is wounded at heart,

When a fierce wind blows down the tower, where she makes her toilette.

Concluding this recitation, he raised the cup and sang:

"Thou art what one could aptly call a man.

But thou'rt endowed with somewhat too much heart!

How queer thou art, cross-grained and impish shrewd!

A spirit too, thou couldst not be more shrewd.

If all I say thou dost not think is true,

In secret just a minute search pursue;

For then thou'lt know if I love thee or not."

His song over, he drank the "opening cup" and then observed:

"The cock crows when the moon's rays shine upon the thatchèd inn."

After his observance of the rule followed Yün Erh's turn.

A girl is sad,

Yün Erh began,

When she tries to divine on whom she will depend towards the end of

life.

"My dear child!" laughingly exclaimed Hsüeh P'an, "your worthy Mr. Hsüeh still lives, and why do you give way to fears?"

"Don't confuse her!" remonstrated every one of the party, "don't muddle her!"

"A maiden is wounded at heart."

Yün Erh proceeded:

"When her mother beats and scolds her and never for an instant doth

desist."

"It was only the other day," interposed Hsüeh P'an, "that I saw your mother and that I told her that I would not have her beat you."

"If you still go on babbling," put in the company with one consent, "you'll be fined ten cups."

Hsüeh P'an promptly administered himself a slap on the mouth. "How you lack the faculty of hearing!" he exclaimed. "You are not to say a word more!"

"A girl is glad,"

Yün Erh then resumed:

When her lover cannot brook to leave her and return home.

A maiden is joyful,

When hushing the pan-pipe and double pipe, a stringed instrument she

thrums.

At the end of her effusion, she at once began to sing:

"T'is the third day of the third moon, the nutmegs bloom;

A maggot, lo, works hard to pierce into a flower;

But though it ceaseless bores it cannot penetrate.

So crouching on the buds, it swing-like rocks itself.

My precious pet, my own dear little darling,

If I don't choose to open how can you steal in?"

Finishing her song, she drank the "opening cup," after which she added: "the delicate peach-blossom," and thus complied with the exigencies of the rule.

Next came Hsüeh P'an. "Is it for me to speak now?" Hsüeh P'an asked.

"A maiden is sad…"

But a long time elapsed after these words were uttered and yet nothing further was heard.

"Sad for what?" Feng Tzu-ying laughingly asked. "Go on and tell us at once!"

Hsüeh P'an was much perplexed. His eyes rolled about like a bell.

"A girl is sad…"

he hastily repeated. But here again he coughed twice before he proceeded.

"A girl is sad."

he said:

"When she marries a spouse who is a libertine."

This sentence so tickled the fancy of the company that they burst out into a loud fit of laughter.

"What amuses you so?" shouted Hsüeh P'an, "is it likely that what I say is not correct? If a girl marries a man, who chooses to forget all virtue, how can she not feel sore at heart?"

But so heartily did they all laugh that their bodies were bent in two. "What you say is quite right," they eagerly replied. "So proceed at once with the rest."

Hsüeh P'an thereupon stared with vacant gaze.

"A girl is grieved…."

he added:

But after these few words he once more could find nothing to say.

"What is she grieved about?" they asked.

"When a huge monkey finds its way into the inner room."

Hsüeh P'an retorted.

This reply set every one laughing. "He must be mulcted," they cried, "he must be mulcted. The first one could anyhow be overlooked; but this line is more unintelligible."

As they said this, they were about to pour the wine, when Pao-yü smilingly interfered. "The rhyme is all right," he observed.

"The master of the rules," Hsüeh P'an remarked, "approves it in every way, so what are you people fussing about?"

Hearing this, the company eventually let the matter drop.

"The two lines, that follow, are still more difficult," suggested Yün

Erh with a smile, "so you had better let me recite for you."

"Fiddlesticks!" exclaimed Hsüeh P'an, "do you really fancy that I have no good ones! Just you listen to what I shall say.

"A girl is glad,

When in the bridal room she lies, with flowery candles burning, and

she is loth to rise at morn."

This sentiment filled one and all with amazement. "How supremely excellent this line is!" they ejaculated.

"A girl is joyful,"

Hsüeh P'an resumed,

"During the consummation of wedlock."

Upon catching this remark, the party turned their heads away, and shouted: "Dreadful! Dreadful! But quick sing your song and have done."

Forthwith Hsüeh P'an sang:

"A mosquito buzzes heng, heng, heng!"

Every one was taken by surprise. "What kind of song is this?" they inquired.

But Hsüeh P'an went on singing:

"Two flies buzz weng, weng, weng."

"Enough," shouted his companions, "that will do, that will do!"

"Do you want to hear it or not?" asked Hsüeh P'an, "this is a new kind of song, called the 'Heng, heng air,' but if you people are not disposed to listen, let me off also from saying what I have to say over the heel-taps and I won't then sing."

"We'll let you off! We'll let you off," answered one and all, "so don't be hindering others."

"A maiden is sad,"

Chiang Yü-han at once began,

When her husband leaves home and never does return.

A maiden is disconsolate,

When she has no money to go and buy some olea frangrans oil.

A maiden is glad,

When the wick of the lantern forms two heads like twin flowers on one

stem.

A maiden is joyful,

When true conjugal peace prevails between her and her mate.

His recital over, he went on to sing:

"How I love thee with those seductive charms of thine, heaven-born!

In truth thou'rt like a living fairy from the azure skies!

The spring of life we now enjoy; we are yet young in years.

Our union is, indeed, a happy match!

But. lo! the milky way doth at its zenith soar;

Hark to the drums which beat around in the watch towers;

So raise the silver lamp and let us soft under the nuptial curtain

steal."

Finishing the song, he drank the "opening cup." "I know," he smiled, "few poetical quotations bearing on this sort of thing. By a stroke of good fortune, however, I yesterday conned a pair of antithetical scrolls; of these I can only remember just one line, but lucky enough for me the object it refers to figures as well on this festive board."

This said he forthwith drained the wine, and, picking up a bud of a diminutive variety of olea fragrans, he recited:

"When the perfume of flowers wafts (hsi jen) itself into a man, he

knows the day is warm."

The company unanimously conceded that the rule had been adhered to. But Hsüeh P'an once again jumped up. "It's awful, awful!" he bawled out boisterously; "he should be fined, he should be made to pay a forfeit; there's no precious article whatever on this table; how is it then that you introduce precious things?"

"There was nothing about precious things!" Chiang Yü-han vehemently explained.

"What I are you still prevaricating?" Hsüeh P'an cried, "Well, repeat it again!"

Chiang Yü-han had no other course but to recite the line a second time. "Now is not Hsi Jen a precious thing?" Hsüeh P'an asked. "If she isn't, what is she? And if you don't believe me, you ask him about it," pointing, at the conclusion of this remark, at Pao-yü.

Pao-yü felt very uncomfortable. Rising to his feet, "Cousin," he observed, "you should be fined heavily."

"I should be! I should be!" Hsüeh P'an shouted, and saying this, he took up the wine and poured it down his throat with one gulp.

Feng Tzu-ying, Chiang Yü-han and their companions thereupon asked him to explain the allusion. Yün Erh readily told them, and Chiang Yü-han hastily got up and pleaded guilty.

"Ignorance," the party said with one consent, "does not amount to guilt."

But presently Pao-yü quitted the banquet to go and satisfy a natural want and Chiang Yü-han followed him out. The two young fellows halted under the eaves of the verandah, and Chiang Yü-han then recommenced to make ample apologies. Pao-yü, however, was so attracted by his handsome and genial appearance, that he took quite a violent fancy to him; and squeezing his hand in a firm grip. "If you have nothing to do," he urged, "do let us go over to our place. I've got something more to ask you. It's this, there's in your worthy company some one called Ch'i Kuan, with a reputation extending at present throughout the world; but, unfortunately, I alone have not had the good luck of seeing him even once."

"This is really," rejoined Chiang Yü-han with a smile, "my own infant name."

This disclosure at once made Pao-yü quite exuberant, and stamping his feet he smiled. "How lucky! I'm in luck's way!" he exclaimed. "In very truth your reputation is no idle report. But to-day is our first meeting, and what shall I do?"

After some thought, he produced a fan from his sleeve, and, unloosening one of the jade pendants, he handed it to Ch'i Kuan. "This is a mere trifle," he said. "It does not deserve your acceptance, yet it will be a small souvenir of our acquaintance to-day."

Ch'i Kuan received it with a smile. "I do not deserve," he replied, "such a present. How am I worthy of such an honour! But never mind, I've also got about me here a strange thing, which I put on this morning; it is brand-new yet, and will, I hope, suffice to prove to you a little of the feeling of esteem which I entertain for you."

With these protestations, he raised his garment, and, untying a deep red sash, with which his nether clothes were fastened, he presented it to Pao-yü. "This sash," he remarked, "is an article brought as tribute from the Queen of the Hsi Hsiang Kingdom. If you attach this round you in summer, your person will emit a fragrant perfume, and it will not perspire. It was given to me yesterday by the Prince of Pei Ching, and it is only to-day that I put it on. To any one else, I would certainly not be willing to present it. But, Mr. Secundus, please do unfasten the one you have on and give it to me to bind round me."

This proposal extremely delighted Pao-yü. With precipitate haste, he accepted his gift, and, undoing the dark brown sash he wore, he surrendered it to Ch'i Kuan. But both had just had time to adjust their respective sashes when they heard a loud voice say: "Oh! I've caught you!" And they perceived Hsüeh P'an come out by leaps and bounds. Clutching the two young fellows, "What do you," he exclaimed, "leave your wine for and withdraw from the banquet. Be quick and produce those things, and let me see them!"

"There's nothing to see!" rejoined the two young fellows with one voice.

Hsüeh P'an, however, would by no means fall in with their views. And it was only Feng Tzu-ying, who made his appearance on the scene, who succeeded in dissuading him. So resuming their seats, they drank until dark, when the company broke up.

Pao-yü, on his return into the garden, loosened his clothes, and had tea. But Hsi Jen noticed that the pendant had disappeared from his fan and she inquired of him what had become of it.

"I must have lost it this very moment," Pao-yü replied.

At bedtime, however, descrying a deep red sash, with spots like specks of blood, attached round his waist, Hsi Jen guessed more or less the truth of what must have transpired. "As you have such a nice sash to fasten your trousers with," Hsi Jen consequently said, "you'd better return that one of mine."

This reminder made the fact dawn upon Pao-yü that the sash had originally been the property of Hsi Jen, and that he should by rights not have parted with it; but however much he felt his conscience smitten by remorse, he failed to see how he could very well disclose the truth to her. He could therefore only put on a smiling expression and add, "I'll give you another one instead."

Hsi Jen was prompted by his rejoinder to nod her head and sigh. "I felt sure;" she observed; "that you'd go again and do these things! Yet you shouldn't take my belongings and bestow them on that low-bred sort of people. Can it be that no consideration finds a place in your heart?"

She then felt disposed to tender him a few more words of admonition, but dreading, on the other hand, lest she should, by irritating him, bring the fumes of the wine to his head, she thought it best to also retire to bed.

Nothing worth noticing occurred during that night. The next day, when she woke up at the break of day, she heard Pao-yü call out laughingly: "Robbers have been here in the night; are you not aware of it? Just you look at my trousers."

Hsi Jen lowered her head and looked. She saw at a glance that the sash, which Pao-yü had worn the previous day, was bound round her own waist, and she at once realised that Pao-yü must have effected the change during the night; but promptly unbinding it, "I don't care for such things!" she cried, "quick, take it away!"

At the sight of her manner, Pao-yü had to coax her with gentle terms. This so disarmed Hsi Jen, that she felt under the necessity of putting on the sash; but, subsequently when Pao-yü stepped out of the apartment, she at last pulled it off, and, throwing it away in an empty box, she found one of hers and fastened it round her waist.

Pao-yü, however, did not in the least notice what she did, but inquired whether anything had happened the day before.

"Lady Secunda," Hsi Jen explained, "dispatched some one and fetched Hsiao Hung away. Her wish was to have waited for your return; but as I thought that it was of no consequence, I took upon myself to decide, and sent her off."

"That's all right!" rejoined Pao-yü. "I knew all about it, there was no need for her to wait."

"Yesterday," resumed Hsi Jen, "the Imperial Consort deputed the Eunuch Hsia to bring a hundred and twenty ounces of silver and to convey her commands that from the first to the third, there should be offered, in the Ch'ing Hsu temple, thanksgiving services to last for three days and that theatrical performances should be given, and oblations presented: and to tell our senior master, Mr. Chia Chen, to take all the gentlemen, and go and burn incense and worship Buddha. Besides this, she also sent presents for the dragon festival."

Continuing, she bade a young servant-maid produce the presents, which had been received the previous day. Then he saw two palace fans of the best quality, two strings of musk-scented beads, two rolls of silk, as fine as the phoenix tail, and a superior mat worked with hibiscus. At the sight of these things, Pao-yü was filled with immeasurable pleasure, and he asked whether the articles brought to all the others were similar to his.

"The only things in excess of yours that our venerable mistress has," Hsi Jen explained, "consist of a scented jade sceptre and a pillow made of agate. Those of your worthy father and mother, our master and mistress, and of your aunt exceed yours by a scented sceptre of jade. Yours are the same as Miss Pao's. Miss Lin's are like those of Misses Secunda, Tertia and Quarta, who received nothing beyond a fan and several pearls and none of all the other things. As for our senior lady, Mrs. Chia Chu, and lady Secunda, these two got each two rolls of gauze, two rolls of silk, two scented bags, and two sticks of medicine."

After listening to her enumeration, "What's the reason of this?" he smiled. "How is it that Miss Lin's are not the same as mine, but that Miss Pao's instead are like my own? May not the message have been wrongly delivered?"

"When they were brought out of the palace yesterday," Hsi Jen rejoined, "they were already divided in respective shares, and slips were also placed on them, so that how could any mistake have been made? Yours were among those for our dowager lady's apartments. When I went and fetched them, her venerable ladyship said that I should tell you to go there to-morrow at the fifth watch to return thanks.

"Of course, it's my duty to go over," Pao-yü cried at these words, but forthwith calling Tzu Chüan: "Take these to your Miss Lin," he told her, "and say that I got them, yesterday, and that she is at liberty to keep out of them any that take her fancy."

Tzu Chüan expressed her obedience and took the things away. After a short time she returned. "Miss Lin says," she explained, "that she also got some yesterday, and that you, Master Secundus, should keep yours."

Hearing this reply, Pao-yü quickly directed a servant to put them away. But when he had washed his face and stepped out of doors, bent upon going to his grandmother's on the other side, in order to pay his obeisance, he caught sight of Lin Tai-yü coming along towards him, from the opposite direction. Pao-yü hurriedly walked up to her, "I told you," he smiled, "to select those you liked from my things; how is it you didn't choose any?"

Lin Tai-yü had long before banished from her recollection the incident of the previous day, which had made her angry with Pao-yü, and was only exercised about the occurrence of this present occasion. "I'm not gifted with such extreme good fortune," she consequently answered, "as to be able to accept them. I can't compete with Miss Pao, in connection with whom something or other about gold or about jade is mentioned. We are simply beings connected with the vegetable kingdom."

The allusion to the two words "gold and jade," aroused, of a sudden, much emotion in the heart of Pao-yü. "If beyond what people say about gold or jade," he protested, "the idea of any such things ever crosses my mind, may the heavens annihilate me, and may the earth extinguish me, and may I for ten thousand generations never assume human form!"

These protestations convinced Lin Tai-yü that suspicion had been aroused in him. With all promptitude, she smiled and observed, "They're all to no use! Why utter such oaths, when there's no rhyme or reason! Who cares about any gold or any jade of yours!"

"It would be difficult for me to tell you, to your face, all the secrets of my heart," Pao-yü resumed, "but by and bye you'll surely come to know all about them! After the three—my old grandmother, my father and my mother—you, my cousin, hold the fourth place; and, if there be a fifth, I'm ready to swear another oath."

"You needn't swear any more," Lin Tai-yü replied, "I'm well aware that I, your younger cousin, have a place in your heart; but the thing is that at the sight of your elder cousin, you at once forget all about your younger cousin."

"This comes again from over-suspicion!" ejaculated Pao; "for I'm not at all disposed that way."

"Well," resumed Lin Tai-yü, "why did you yesterday appeal to me when that hussey Pao-ch'ai would not help you by telling a story? Had it been I, who had been guilty of any such thing, I don't know what you wouldn't have done again."

But during their tête-a-tête, they espied Pao-ch'ai approach from the opposite direction, so readily they beat a retreat. Pao-ch'ai had distinctly caught sight of them, but pretending she had not seen them, she trudged on her way, with lowered head, and repaired into Madame Wang's apartments. After a short stay, she came to this side to pay dowager lady Chia a visit. With her she also found Pao-yü.

Pao-ch'ai ever made it a point to hold Pao-yü aloof as her mother had in days gone by mentioned to Madame Wang and her other relatives that the gold locket had been the gift of a bonze, that she had to wait until such time as some suitor with jade turned up before she could be given in marriage, and other similar confidences. But on discovery the previous day that Yüan Ch'un's presents to her alone resembled those of Pao-yü, she began to feel all the more embarrassed. Luckily, however, Pao-yü was so entangled in Lin Tai-yü's meshes and so absorbed in heart and mind with fond thoughts of his Lin Tai-yü that he did not pay the least attention to this circumstance. But she unawares now heard Pao-yü remark with a smile: "Cousin Pao, let me see that string of scented beads of yours!"

By a strange coincidence, Pao-ch'ai wore the string of beads round her left wrist so she had no alternative, when Pao-yü asked her for it, than to take it off. Pao-ch'ai, however, was naturally inclined to embonpoint, and it proved therefore no easy matter for her to get the beads off; and while Pao-yü stood by watching her snow-white arm, feelings of admiration were quickly stirred up in his heart. "Were this arm attached to Miss Lin's person," he secretly pondered, "I might, possibly have been able to caress it! But it is, as it happens, part and parcel of her body; how I really do deplore this lack of good fortune."

Suddenly he bethought himself of the secret of gold and jade, and he again scanned Pao-ch'ai's appearance. At the sight of her countenance, resembling a silver bowl, her eyes limpid like water and almond-like in shape, her lips crimson, though not rouged, her eyebrows jet-black, though not pencilled, also of that fascination and grace which presented such a contrast to Lin Tai-yü's style of beauty, he could not refrain from falling into such a stupid reverie, that though Pao-ch'ai had got the string of beads off her wrist, and was handing them to him, he forgot all about them and made no effort to take them. Pao-ch'ai realised that he was plunged in abstraction, and conscious of the awkward position in which she was placed, she put down the string of beads, and turning round was on the point of betaking herself away, when she perceived Lin Tai-yü, standing on the door-step, laughing significantly while biting a handkerchief she held in her mouth. "You can't resist," Pao-ch'ai said, "a single puff of wind; and why do you stand there and expose yourself to the very teeth of it?"

"Wasn't I inside the room?" rejoined Lin Tai-yü, with a cynical smile. "But I came out to have a look as I heard a shriek in the heavens; it turned out, in fact, to be a stupid wild goose!"

"A stupid wild goose!" repeated Pao-ch'ai. "Where is it, let me also see it!"

"As soon as I got out," answered Lin Tai-yü, "it flew away with a 't'e-rh' sort of noise."

While replying, she threw the handkerchief, she was holding, straight into Pao-yü's face. Pao-yü was quite taken by surprise. He was hit on the eye. "Ai-yah!" he exclaimed.

But, reader, do you want to hear the sequel? In that case, listen to the circumstances, which will be disclosed in the next chapter.