Li Ch'i then suggested as a finale the line:
By these verses, I'd fain sing th' Emperor's praise.
"That's enough, that will do!" Li Wan cried. "The rhymes haven't, I admit, been exhausted, but any outside words you might introduce, will, if used in a forced sense, be worth nothing at all."
While continuing their arguments, the various inmates drew near and kept up a searching criticism for a time.
Hsiang-yün was found to be the one among them, who had devised the largest number of lines.
"This is mainly due," they unanimously laughed, "to the virtue of that piece of venison!"
"Let's review them line by line as they come," Li Wan smilingly proposed, "but yet as if they formed one continuous poem. Here's Pao-yü last again!"
"I haven't, the fact is, the knack of pairing sentences," Pao-yü rejoined with a smile. "You'd better therefore make some allowance for me!"
"There's no such thing as making allowances for you in meeting after meeting," Li Wan demurred laughing, "that you should again after that give out the rhymes in a reckless manner, waste your time and not show yourself able to put two lines together. You must absolutely bear a penalty today. I just caught a glimpse of the red plum in the Lung Ts'ui monastery; and how charming it is! I meant to have plucked a twig to put in a vase, but so loathsome is the way in which Miao Yü goes on, that I won't have anything to do with her! But we'll punish him by making him, for the sake of fun, fetch a twig for us to put in water."
"This penalty," they shouted with one accord, "is both excellent as well as pleasant."