"This is all very well," smiled Hsiang-yün. "The only thing is what kind of empty words will, I wonder, be best to use? Just you first think of one and let me see."
Pao-ch'ai plunged in thought for a time, after which she laughingly remarked: "Dream of chrysanthemums is good."
"It's positively good!" Hsiang-yün smiled. "I've also got one: 'the
Chrysanthemum shadow,' will that do?"
"Well enough," Pao-ch'ai answered, "the only objection is that people have written on it; yet if the themes are to be many, we might throw this in. I've got another one too!"
"Be quick, and tell it!" Hsiang-yün urged.
"What do you say to 'ask the Chrysanthemums?'" Pao-ch'ai observed.
Hsiang-yün clapped her hand on the table. "Capital," she cried. "I've thought of one also." She then quickly continued, "It is, search for chrysanthemums; what's your idea about it?"
Pao-ch'ai thought that too would do very well. "Let's choose ten of them first," she next proposed; "and afterwards note them down!"
While talking, they rubbed the ink and moistened the pens. These preparations over, Hsiang-yün began to write, while Pao-ch'ai enumerated the themes. In a short time, they got ten of them.
"Ten don't form a set," Hsiang-yün went on to smilingly suggest, after reading them over. "We'd better complete them by raising their number to twelve; they'll then also be on the same footing as people's pictures and books."