"Why should I cry?" Hsi Jen laughed; "something just got into my eyes and I rubbed them." By these means she readily managed to evade detection; but seeing that Pao-yü wore a deep red archery-sleeved pelisse, ornamented with gold dragons, and lined with fur from foxes' ribs and a grey sable fur surtout with a fringe round the border. "What! have you," she asked, "put on again your new clothes for? specially to come here? and didn't they inquire of you where you were going?"
"I had changed," Pao-yü explained with a grin, "as Mr. Chen had invited me to go over and look at the play."
"Well, sit a while and then go back;" Hsi Jen continued as she nodded her head; "for this isn't the place for you to come to!"
"You'd better be going home now," Pao-yü suggested smirkingly; "where
I've again kept something good for you."
"Gently," smiled Hsi Jen, "for were you to let them hear, what figure would we cut?" And with these, words, she put out her hand and unclasping from Pao-yü's neck the jade of Spiritual Perception, she faced her cousins and remarked exultingly. "Here! see for yourselves; look at this and learn! When I repeatedly talked about it, you all thought it extraordinary, and were anxious to have a glance at it; to-day, you may gaze on it with all your might, for whatever precious thing you may by and by come to see will really never excel such an object as this!"
When she had finished speaking, she handed it over to them, and after they had passed it round for inspection, she again fastened it properly on Pao-yü's neck, and also bade her brother go and hire a small carriage, or engage a small chair, and escort Pao-yü back home.
"If I see him back," Hua Tzu-fang remarked, "there would be no harm, were he even to ride his horse!"
"It isn't because of harm," Hsi Jen replied; "but because he may come across some one from the house."
Hua Tzu-fang promptly went and bespoke a small chair; and when it came to the door, the whole party could not very well detain him, and they of course had to see Pao-yü out of the house; while Hsi Jen, on the other hand, snatched a few fruits and gave them to Ming Yen; and as she at the same time pressed in his hand several cash to buy crackers with to let off, she enjoined him not to tell any one as he himself would likewise incur blame.
As she uttered these words, she straightway escorted Pao-yü as far as outside the door, from whence having seen him mount into the sedan chair, she dropped the curtain; whereupon Ming Yen and her brother, the two of them, led the horses and followed behind in his wake. Upon reaching the street where the Ning mansion was situated, Ming Yen told the chair to halt, and said to Hua Tzu-fang, "It's advisable that I should again go, with Mr. Secundus, into the Eastern mansion, to show ourselves before we can safely betake ourselves home; for if we don't, people will suspect!"