"I don't want it!" laughed Tai-yü. "Were I to wear this sort of thing, I'd look like one of those fisherwomen, one sees depicted in pictures or represented on the stage!"
Upon reaching this point, she remembered that there was some connection between her present remarks and the comparison she had some time back made with regard to Pao-yü, and, before she had time to indulge in regrets, a sense of shame so intense overpowered her that the colour rushed to her face, and, leaning her head on the table, she coughed and coughed till she could not stop. Pao-yü, however, did not detect her embarrassment; but catching sight of some verses lying on the table, he eagerly snatched them up and conned them from beginning to end. "Splendid!" he could not help crying. But the moment Tai-yü heard his exclamation, she speedily jumped to her feet, and clutched the verses and burnt them over the lamp.
"I've already committed them sufficiently to memory!" Pao-yü laughed.
"I want to have a little rest," Tai-yü said, "so please get away; come back again to-morrow."
At these words, Pao-yü drew back his hand, and producing from his breast a gold watch about the size of a walnut, he looked at the time. The hand pointed between eight and nine p.m.; so hastily putting it away, "You should certainly retire to rest!" he replied. "My visit has upset you. I've quite tired you out this long while." With these apologies, he threw the wrapper over him, put on the rain-hat and quitted the room. But turning round, he retraced his steps inside. "Is there anything you fancy to eat?" he asked. "If there be, tell me, and I'll let our venerable ancestor know of it to-morrow as soon as it's day. Won't I explain things clearer than any of the old matrons could?"
"Let me," rejoined Tai-yü smiling, "think in the night. I'll let you know early to-morrow. But harken, it's raining harder than it did; so be off at once! Have you got any attendants, or no?"
"Yes!" interposed the two matrons. "There are servants to wait on him.
They're outside holding his umbrella and lighting the lanterns."
"Are they lighting lanterns with this weather?" laughed Tai-yü.
"It won't hurt them!" Pao-yü answered. "They're made of sheep's horn, so they don't mind the rain."
Hearing this, Tai-yü put back her hand, and, taking down an ornamented glass lantern in the shape of a ball from the book case, she asked the servants to light a small candle and bring it to her; after which, she handed the lantern to Pao-yü. "This," she said, "gives out more light than the others; and is just the thing for rainy weather."