"Isn't this she?" Pao-yü inquired with a smile. "Is she not here warming herself? Had I not been quick in shouting, she would verily have given you a fright."
"There was no need for me to go and frighten her," Ch'ing Wen laughingly observed. "This hussy has frightened her own self."
With these words she ensconced herself again under her own coverlet. "Did you forsooth go out," She Yüeh remarked, "in this smart dress of a circus-performer?"
"Why, of course, she went out like this!" Pao-yü smiled.
"You wouldn't know, for the life of you, how to choose a felicitous day!" She Yüeh added. "There you go and stand about on a fruitless errand. Won't your skin get chapped from the frost?"
Saying this, she again raised the copper cover from the brasier, and, picking up the shovel, she buried the live charcoal deep with ashes, and taking two bits of incense of Cambodia fragrant wood, she threw them over them. She then re-covered the brasier, and repairing to the back of the screen, she gave the lamp a thorough trimming to make it throw out more light; after which, she once more laid herself down.
As Ch'ing Wen had some time before felt cold, and now began to get warm again, she unexpectedly sneezed a couple of times.
"How about that?" sighed Pao-yü. "There you are; you've after all caught a chill!"
"Early this morning," She Yüeh smiled, "she shouted that she wasn't feeling quite herself. Neither did she have the whole day a proper bowl of food. And now, not to speak of her taking so little care of herself, she is still bent upon playing larks upon people! But if she falls ill by and bye, we'll let her suffer what she will have brought upon herself."
"Is your head hot?" Pao-yü asked.