“Alas, story-teller,” interposed the maiden hastily, “it would seem that the star to which you chained your wrist has not carried you into the assembly of the gods.”
“Yet already it has borne me half-way—into a company of malefactors. Doubtless on the morrow the obliging Mandarin Shan Tien will arrange for the journey to be complete.”
“Yet have you then no further wish to continue in an ordinary existence?” asked the maiden.
“To this person,” replied Kai Lung, with a deep-seated look, “existence can never again be ordinary. Admittedly it may be short.”
As they conversed together in this inoffensive manner she whom Li-loe had called the Golden Mouse held in her delicately-formed hands a priceless bowl filled with ripe fruit of the rarer kinds which she had gathered. These from time to time she threw up to the opening, rightly deciding that one in Kai Lung’s position would stand in need of sustenance, and he no less dexterously held and retained them. When the bowl was empty she continued for a space to regard it silently, as though exploring the many-sided recesses of her mind.
“You have claimed to be a story-teller and have indeed made a boast that there is no arising emergency for which you are unprepared,” she said at length. “It now befalls that you may be put to a speedy test. Is the nature of this imagined scene”—thus she indicated the embellishment of the bowl—“familiar to your eyes?”
“It is that known as ‘The Willow,’” replied Kai Lung. “There is a story—”
“There is a story!” exclaimed the maiden, loosening from her brow the overhanging look of care. “Thus and thus. Frequently have I importuned him before whom you will appear to explain to me the meaning of the scene. When you are called upon to plead your cause, see to it well that your knowledge of such a tale is clearly shown. He before whom you kneel, craftily plied meanwhile by my unceasing petulance, will then desire to hear it from your lips... At the striking of the fourth gong the day is done. What lies between rests with your discriminating wit.”
“You are deep in the subtler kinds of wisdom, such as the weak possess,” confessed Kai Lung. “Yet how will this avail to any length?”
“That which is put off from to-day is put off from to-morrow,” was the confident reply. “For the rest—at a corresponding gong-stroke of each day it is this person’s custom to gather fruit. Farewell, minstrel.”