“Assuredly some such inopportune person might be forthcoming,” admitted Lao Ting. “Yet the cost of so formidable a journey would be far beyond this necessitous one’s means.”
“In so charitable a cause affluent friends would not be lacking. Depart on the third day and remain until the ninth and twenty taels of silver will glide imperceptibly into your awaiting sleeve.”
“The prospect of not taking the foremost place in the competition—added to the pangs of those who have hazarded their store upon the unworthy name of Lao—is an ignoble one,” replied the student, after a moment’s thought. “The journey will be a costly task at this season of the rains; it cannot possibly be accomplished for less than fifty taels.”
“It is well said, ‘Do not look at robbers sharing out their spoil: look at them being executed,’” urged Sheng-yin. “Should you be so ill-destined as to compete, and, as would certainly be the case, be awarded a position of contempt, how unendurable would be your anguish when, amidst the execrations of the deluded mob, you remembered that thirty taels of the purest had slipped from your effete grasp.”
“Should the Bridge of the Camel Back be passable, five and forty might suffice,” mused Lao Tung to himself.
“Thirty-seven taels, five hundred cash, are the utmost that your obliging friends would hazard in the quest,” announced Sheng-yin definitely. “On the day following that of the final competition the sum will be honourably—”
“By no means,” interrupted the other, with unswerving firmness. “How thus is the journey to be defrayed? In advance, assuredly.”
“The requirement is unusual. Yet upon satisfactory oaths being offered—”
“This person will pledge the repose of the spirits of his venerated ancestors practically back to prehistoric times,” agreed Lao Ting readily. “From the third to the ninth day he will be absent from the city and will take no part in anything therein. Should he eat his words, may his body be suffocated beneath five cart-loads of books and his weary ghost chained to that of a leprous mule. It is spoken.”
“Truly. But it may as well be written also.” With this expression of narrow-minded suspicion Sheng-yin would have taken up one from a considerable mass of papers lying near at hand, had not Lao Ting suddenly restrained him.