"You had better," madame Wang added, "fetch ten more pills tomorrow morning; and every day about bedtime tell Hsi Jen to give them to you; and when you've had one you can go to sleep!"
"Ever since you, mother, bade me take them," Pao-yü rejoined, "Hsi Jen has daily sent me one, when I was about to turn in."
"Who's this called Hsi Jen?" Chia Chen thereupon ascertained.
"She's a waiting-maid!" madame Wang answered.
"A servant girl," Chia Cheng remonstrated, "can be called by whatever name one chooses; anything is good enough; but who's it who has started this kind of pretentious name!"
Madame Wang noticed that Chia Cheng was not in a happy frame of mind, so that she forthwith tried to screen matters for Pao-yü, by saying: "It's our old lady who has originated it!"
"How can it possibly be," Chia Cheng exclaimed, "that her ladyship knows anything about such kind of language? It must, for a certainty, be Pao-yü!"
Pao-yü perceiving that he could not conceal the truth from him, was under the necessity of standing up and of explaining; "As I have all along read verses, I remembered the line written by an old poet:
"What time the smell of flowers wafts itself into man, one knows the
day is warm.
"And as this waiting-maid's surname was Hua (flower), I readily gave her the name, on the strength of this sentiment."