"If I'm telling a lie," Pao-yü laughed, "I'm like that cockatoo on that frame!"
"You verily do foolish things!" Tai-yü and T'an Ch'un exclaimed with one voice, at these words. "But not to mention that they were doggerel lines, had they even been anything like what verses should be, our writings shouldn't have been hawked about outside."
"What's there to fear?" Pao-yü smiled. "Hadn't the writings of women of old been handed outside the limits of the inner chambers, why, there would, at present, be no one with any idea of their very existence."
While he passed this remark, they saw Ju Hua arrive from Hsi Ch'un's quarters to ask Pao-yü to go over; and Pao-yü eventually took his departure.
Hsiang Ling then pressed (Tai-yü) to give her T'u's poems. "Do choose some theme," she also asked Tai-yü and T'an Ch'un, "and let me go and write on it. When I've done, I'll bring it for you to correct."
"Last night," Tai-yü observed, "the moon was so magnificent, that I meant to improvise a stanza on it; but as I haven't done yet, go at once and write one using the fourteenth rhyme, 'han,' (cool). You're at liberty to make use of whatever words you fancy."
Hearing this, Hsiang Ling was simply delighted, and taking the poems, she went back. After considerable exertion, she succeeded in devising a couplet, but so little able was she to tear herself away from the 'T'u' poems, that she perused another couple of stanzas, until she had no inclination for either tea or food, and she felt in an unsettled mood, try though she did to sit or recline.
"Why," Pao-ch'ai remonstrated, "do you bring such trouble upon yourself? It's that P'in Erh, who has led you on to it! But I'll settle accounts with her! You've all along been a thick-headed fool; but now that you've burdened yourself with all this, you've become a greater fool."
"Miss," smiled Hsiang Ling, "don't confuse me."
So saying, she set to work and put together a stanza, which she first and foremost handed to Pao-ch'ai to look over.