Hsiang Ling assented, and brought from the other side a small embroidered silk box.
"These," explained "aunt" Hsüeh, "are a new kind of flowers, made in the palace. They consist of twelve twigs of flowers of piled gauze. I thought of them yesterday, and as they will, the pity is, only get old, if uselessly put away, why not give them to the girls to wear them in their hair! I meant to have sent them over yesterday, but I forgot all about them. You come to-day most opportunely, and if you will take them with you, I shall have got them off my hands. To the three young ladies in your family give two twigs each, and of the six that will remain give a couple to Miss Lin, and the other four to lady Feng."
"Better keep them and give them to your daughter Pao Ch'ai to wear," observed madame Wang, "and have done with it; why think of all the others?"
"You don't know, sister," replied "aunt" Hsüeh, "what a crotchety thing
Pao Ch'ai is! she has no liking for flower or powder."
With these words on her lips, Chou Jui's wife took the box and walked out of the door of the room. Perceiving that Chin Ch'uan-erh was still sunning herself outside, Chou Jui's wife asked her: "Isn't this Hsiang Ling, the waiting-maid that we've often heard of as having been purchased just before the departure of the Hsüeh family for the capital, and on whose account there occurred some case of manslaughter or other?"
"Of course it's she," replied Chin Ch'uan. But as they were talking, they saw Hsiang Ling draw near smirkingly, and Chou Jui's wife at once seized her by the hand, and after minutely scrutinizing her face for a time, she turned round to Chin Ch'uan-erh and smiled. "With these features she really resembles slightly the style of lady Jung of our Eastern Mansion."
"So I too maintain!" said Chin Ch'uan-erh.
Chou Jui's wife then asked Hsiang Ling, "At what age did you enter this family? and where are your father and mother at present?" and also inquired, "In what year of your teens are you? and of what place are you a native?"
But Hsiang Ling, after listening to all these questions, simply nodded her head and replied, "I can't remember."
When Mrs. Chou and Chin Ch'uan-erh heard these words, their spirits changed to grief, and for a while they felt affected and wounded at heart; but in a short time, Mrs. Chou brought the flowers into the room at the back of madame Wang's principal apartment.