Dowager lady Chia, at these words, burst out into a boisterous fit of laughter. "It's this hussey Feng," she observed, "who, after all, takes my side! What you say is quite right. Hadn't it been for you, I would again have been duped by them!"
"Dear senior!" lady Feng smiled. Just hand over our two cousins to those two ladies and let each take one under her charge and finish. If you make each contribute one share, it will be square enough."
"This is perfectly fair," eagerly rejoined old lady Chia. "Let this suggestion be carried out!"
Lai Ta's mother hastily stood up. "This is such a subversion of right," she smiled, "that I'll put my back up on account of the two ladies. She's a son's wife, on the other side, and, in here, only a wife's brother's child; and yet she doesn't incline towards her mother-in-law and her aunt, but takes other people's part. This son's wife has therefore become a perfect stranger; and a close niece has, in fact, become a distant niece!"
As she said this, dowager lady Chia and every one present began to laugh. "If the junior ladies subscribe twelve taels each," Lai Ta's mother went on to ask, "we must, as a matter of course, also come one degree lower; eh?"
Upon hearing this, old lady Chia remonstrated. "This won't do!" she observed. "You naturally should rank one degree lower, but you're all, I am well aware, wealthy people; and, in spite of your status being somewhat lower, your funds are more flourishing than theirs. It's only just then that you should be placed on the same standing as those people!"
The posse of nurses expressed with promptness their acceptance of the proposal their old mistress made.
"The young ladies," dowager lady Chia resumed, "should merely give something for the sake of appearances! If each one contributes a sum proportionate to her monthly allowance, it will be ample!" Turning her head, "Yüan Yang!" she cried, "a few of you should assemble in like manner, and consult as to what share you should take in the matter. So bring them along!"
Yüan Yang assured her that her desires would be duly attended to and walked away. But she had not been absent for any length of time, when she appeared on the scene along with P'ing Erh, Hsi Jen, Ts'ai Hsia and other girls, and a number of waiting-maids as well. Of these, some subscribed two taels; others contributed one tael.
"Can it be," dowager lady Chia then said to P'ing Erh, "that you don't want any birthday celebrated for your mistress, that you don't range yourself also among them?"