Lady Feng assented to each of her recommendations; and when the second arrived, she came, after breakfast, to the Ning mansion to see how Mrs. Ch'in was getting on; and though she found her none the worse, the flesh all over her face and person had however become emaciated and parched up. She readily sat with Mrs. Ch'in for a long while, and after they had chatted on one thing and another, she again reiterated the assurances that this illness involved no danger, and distracted her for ever so long.
"Whether I get well or not," observed Mrs. Ch'in, "we'll know in spring; now winter is just over, and I'm anyhow no worse, so that possibly I may get all right; and yet there's no saying; but, my dear sister-in-law, do press our old lady to compose her mind! yesterday, her ladyship sent me some potato dumplings, with minced dates in them, and though I had two, they seem after all to be very easily digested!"
"I'll send you round some more to-morrow," lady Feng suggested; "I'm now going to look up your mother-in-law, and will then hurry back to give my report to our dowager lady."
"Please, sister-in-law," Mrs. Ch'in said, "present my best respects to her venerable ladyship, as well as to madame Wang."
Lady Feng signified that she would comply with her wishes, and, forthwith leaving the apartment, she came over and sat in Mrs. Yu's suite of rooms.
"How do you, who don't see our son's wife very often, happen to find her?" inquired Mrs. Yu.
Lady Feng drooped her head for some time. "There's no help," she ventured, "for this illness! but you should likewise make every subsequent preparation, for it would also be well if you could scour it away."
"I've done so much as to secretly give orders," replied Mrs. Yu, "to get things ready; but for that thing (the coffin), there's no good timber to be found, so that it will have to be looked after by and by."
Lady Feng swallowed hastily a cup of tea, and after a short chat, "I must be hurrying back," she remarked, "to deliver my message to our dowager lady!"
"You should," urged Mrs. Yu, "be sparse in what you tell her lady ship so as not to frighten an old person like her!"