"It's nothing at all!" Ch'ing Wen rejoined, after coughing twice. "When did I get so delicate?"
But while she spoke, they heard the striking clock, suspended on the partition wall in the outer rooms, give two sounds of 'tang, tang,' and the matron, on the night watch outside, say: "Now, young girls, go to sleep. To-morrow will be time enough for you to chat and laugh!"
"Don't let's talk!" Pao-yü then whispered, "for, mind, we'll also induce them to start chattering." After this, they at last went to sleep.
The next day, they got up at an early hour. Ch'ing Wen's nose was indeed considerably stopped. Her voice was hoarse; and she felt no inclination to move.
"Be quick," urged Pao-yü, "and don't make a fuss, for your mistress, my mother, may come to know of it, and bid you also shift to your house and nurse yourself. Your home might, of course, be all very nice, but it's in fact somewhat cold. So isn't it better here? Go and lie down in the inner rooms, and I'll give orders to some one to send for the doctor to come quietly by the back door and have a look at you. You'll then get all right again."
"In spite of what you say," Ch'ing Wen demurred, "you must really say something about it to our senior lady, Mrs. Chia Chu; otherwise the doctor will be coming unawares, and people will begin to ask questions; and what answer could one give them?"
Pao-yü found what she said so full of reason that he called an old nurse. "Go and deliver this message to your senior mistress," he enjoined her. "Tell her that Ch'ing Wen got a slight chill yesterday. That as it's nothing to speak of, and Hsi Jen is besides away, there would be, more than ever, no one here to look after things, were she to go home and attend to herself, so let her send for a doctor to come quietly by the back entrance and see what's the matter with her; but don't let her breathe a word about it to Madame Wang, my mother."
The old nurse was away a considerable time on the errand. On her return, "Our senior mistress," she reported, "has been told everything. She says that: 'if she gets all right, after taking a couple of doses of medicine, it will be well and good. But that in the event of not recovering, it would, really, be the right thing for her to go to her own home. That the season isn't healthy at present, and that if the other girls caught her complaint it would be a small thing; but that the good health of the young ladies is a vital matter.'"
Ch'ing Wen was lying in the winter apartment, coughing and coughing, when overhearing (Li Wan's) answer, she lost control over her temper. "Have I got such a dreadful epidemic," she said, "that she fears that I shall bring it upon others? I'll clear off at once from this place; for mind you don't get any headaches and hot heads during the course of your lives."
"While uttering her grievances, she was bent upon getting up immediately, when Pao-yü hastened to smile and to press her down.