"You antiquated thing!" replied Mrs. Hsüeh laughing, "set your mind at ease, and go and drink your own wine! I won't let him have too much, and should even the old lady say anything, let the fault be mine."
Saying this, she asked a waiting-maid to take nurse Li along with her and give her also a glass of wine so as to keep out the cold air.
When nurse Li heard these words, she had no alternative but to go for a time with all the others and have some wine to drink.
"The wine need not be warmed: I prefer it cold!" Pao-yü went on to suggest meanwhile.
"That won't do," remonstrated Mrs. Hsüeh; "cold wine will make your hand tremble when you write."
"You have," interposed Pao Ch'ai smiling, "the good fortune, cousin Pao-yü, of having daily opportunities of acquiring a knowledge of every kind of subject, and yet don't you know that the properties of wine are mostly heating? If you drink wine warm, its effects soon dispel, but if you drink it cold, it at once congeals in you; and as upon your intestines devolves the warming of it, how can you not derive any harm? and won't you yet from this time change this habit of yours? leave off at once drinking that cold wine."
Pao-yü finding that the words he had heard contained a good deal of sense, speedily put down the cold wine, and having asked them to warm it, he at length drank it.
Tai-yü was bent upon cracking melon seeds, saying nothing but simply pursing up her lips and smiling, when, strange coincidence, Hsüeh Yen, Tai-yü's waiting-maid, walked in and handed her mistress a small hand-stove.
"Who told you to bring it?" ascertained Tai-yü grinningly. "I'm sorry to have given whoever it is the trouble; I'm obliged to her. But did she ever imagine that I would freeze to death?"
"Tzu Chuan was afraid," replied Hsüeh Yen, "that you would, miss, feel cold, and she asked me to bring it over."