"Oh!" cried Pei-Hang, "I thought perhaps I should never see you again, and I have found you almost directly."
"And what is my name?" asked the girl, laughing.
"Yun-Ying," replied Pei-Hang. "Yun-Ying, Yun-Ying," he repeated, in a singing tone, just as he had been saying it all the time as he walked along, as if he loved the sound of it.
Yun-Ying was dressed in white underneath, but her over-dress was bright blue, embroidered with beautiful flowers which she had worked herself; and she stood in the door of the hut, with a peach tree in full bloom over her head, making such a picture of youth and loveliness that Pei-Hang's heart seemed to jump up into his throat, and beat there fast enough to choke him.
"Who are you? And how do you come to know Yun-Ying?" asked the old woman peering and blinking at him, with her hand over her eyes, to shade them from the sun.
And when she heard about the dream, and the red cord, and that Pei-Hang wanted to marry her daughter, she did not look at all pleased.
"If I had two daughters you might have one of them, and welcome," she grumbled.
For Pei-Hang was not by any means a bad match. His parents were well off, and he was their only child.
But Yun-Ying was a very pretty girl, and a mandarin of Chang-ngan was anxious to make her his wife.
"He is four times her age, it is true," said her mother, explaining this to Pei-Hang; "but he is very rich. All his dishes and plates are gold, and they say his drinking-cups are gold, set with diamonds."