"You're wrong there, worthy ancestor," lady Feng laughed with alacrity. "People in the world as a rule maintain that 'too shrewd and clever a person can't, it is feared, live long.' Now what people of the world invariably say people of the world invariably believe. But of you alone, my dear senior, can no such thing be averred or believed. For there you are, ancestor mine, a hundred times sharper and cleverer than I; and how is it that you now enjoy both perfect happiness and longevity? But I presume that I shall by and bye excel you by a hundredfold, and die at length, after a life of a thousand years, when you venerable senior shall have departed from these mortal scenes!"
"After every one is dead and gone," dowager lady Chia laughingly observed, "what pleasure will there be, if two antiquated elves, like you and I will be, remain behind?"
This joke excited general mirth.
But so concerned was Pao-yü about Ch'ing Wen and other matters that he was the first to make a move and return into the garden. On his arrival at his quarters, he found the rooms full of the fragrance emitted by the medicines. Not a soul did he, however, see about. Ch'ing Wen was reclining all alone on the stove-couch. Her face was feverish and red. When he came to touch it, his hand experienced a scorching sensation. Retracing his steps therefore towards the stove, he warmed his hands and inserted them under the coverlet and felt her. Her body as well was as hot as fire.
"If the others have left," he then remarked, "there's nothing strange about it, but are She Yüeh and Ch'iu Wen too so utterly devoid of feeling as to have each gone after her own business?"
"As regards Ch'iu Wen," Ch'ing Wen explained, "I told her to go and have her meal. And as for She Yüeh, P'ing Erh came just now and called her out of doors and there they are outside confabbing in a mysterious way! What the drift of their conversation can be I don't know. But they must be talking about my having fallen ill, and my not leaving this place to go home."
"P'ing Erh isn't that sort of person," Pao-yü pleaded. "Besides, she had no idea whatever about your illness, so that she couldn't have come specially to see how you were getting on. I fancy her object was to look up She Yüeh to hobnob with her, but finding unexpectedly that you were not up to the mark, she readily said that she had come on purpose to find what progress you were making. This was quite a natural thing for a person with so wily a disposition to say, for the sake of preserving harmony. But if you don't go home, it's none of her business. You two have all along been, irrespective of other things, on such good terms that she could by no means entertain any desire to injure the friendly relations which exist between you, all on account of something that doesn't concern her."
"Your remarks are right enough," Ch'ing Wen rejoined, "but I do suspect her, as why did she too start, all of a sudden, imposing upon me?"
"Wait, I'll walk out by the back door," Pao-yü smiled, "and go to the foot of the window, and listen to what she's saying. I'll then come and tell you."
Speaking the while, he, in point of fact, sauntered out of the back door; and getting below the window, he lent an ear to their confidences.