At this inquiry, Tai-yü too could not help laughing. "The question was originally nicely put," she felt urged to rejoin with a laugh. "But though the writer sets it gracefully, you ask it likewise with equal grace!"
"At one time," Pao-yü. observed, "all you knew was to suspect that I (was in love with Pao-ch'ai); and have you now no faults to find?"
"Who ever could have imagined her such a really nice girl!" Tai-yü smiled. "I've all along thought her full of guile!" And seizing the occasion, she told Pao-yü with full particulars how she had, in the game of forfeits, made an improper quotation, and what advice Pao-ch'ai had given her on the subject; how she had even sent her some birds' nests, and what they had said in the course of the chat they had had during her illness.
Pao-yü then at length came to see why it was that such a warm friendship had sprung up between them. "To tell you the truth," he consequently remarked smilingly, "I was just wondering when Meng Kuang had received Liang Hung's candlestick; and, lo, you, indeed, got it, when a mere child and through some reckless talk, (and your friendship was sealed)."
As the conversation again turned on Pao-ch'in, Tai-yü recalled to mind that she had no sister, and she could not help melting once more into tears.
Pao-yü hastened to reason with her. "This is again bringing trouble upon yourself!" he argued. "Just see how much thinner you are this year than you were last; and don't you yet look after your health? You deliberately worry yourself every day of your life. And when you've had a good cry, you feel at last that you've acquitted yourself of the duties of the day."
"Of late," Tai-yü observed, drying her tears, "I feel sore at heart. But my tears are scantier by far than they were in years gone by. With all the grief and anguish, which gnaw my heart, my tears won't fall plentifully."
"This is because weeping has become a habit with you," Pao-yü added. "But though you fancy to yourself that it is so, how can your tears have become scantier than they were?"
While arguing with her, he perceived a young waiting-maid, attached to his room, bring him a red felt wrapper. "Our senior mistress, lady Chia Chu," she went on, "has just sent a servant to say that, as it snows, arrangements should be made for inviting people to-morrow to write verses."
But hardly was this message delivered, than they saw Li Wan's maid enter, and invite Tai-yü to go over. Pao-yü then proposed to Tai-yü to accompany him, and together they came to the Tao Hsiang village. Tai-yü changed her shoes for a pair of low shoes made of red scented sheep skin, ornamented with gold, and hollowed clouds. She put on a deep red crape cloak, lined with white fox fur; girdled herself with a lapis-lazuli coloured sash, decorated with bright green double rings and four sceptres; and covered her head with a hat suitable for rainy weather. After which, the two cousins trudged in the snow, and repaired to this side of the mansion. Here they discovered the young ladies assembled, dressed all alike in deep red felt or camlet capes, with the exception of Li Wan, who was clad in a woollen jacket, buttoning in the middle.