Ch'ing Wen then took her medicine. When evening came, she had another couple of doses. But though in the course of the night, she broke out into a slight perspiration, she did not see any change for the better in her state. Still she felt feverish, her head sore, her nose stopped, her voice hoarse. The next day, Dr. Wang came again to examine her pulse and see how she was getting on. Besides other things, he increased the proportions of certain medicines in the decoction and reduced others; but in spite of her fever having been somewhat brought down, her head continued to ache as much as ever.
"Go and fetch the snuff," Pao-yü said to She Yüeh, "and give it to her to sniff. She'll feel more at ease after she has had several strong sneezes."
She Yüeh went, in fact, and brought a flat crystal bottle, inlaid with a couple of golden stars, and handed it to Pao-yü.
Pao-yü speedily raised the cover of the bottle. Inside it, he discovered, represented on western enamel, a fair-haired young girl, in a state of nature, on whose two sides figured wings of flesh. This bottle contained some really first-rate foreign snuff.
Ch'ing Wen's attention was fixedly concentrated on the representation.
"Sniff a little!" Pao-yü urged. "If the smell evaporates, it won't be worth anything."
Ch'ing Wen, at his advice, promptly dug out a little with her nail, and applied it to her nose. But with no effect. So digging out again a good quantity of it, she pressed it into her nostrils. Then suddenly she experienced a sensation in her nose as if some pungent matter had penetrated into the very duct leading into the head, and she sneezed five or six consecutive times, until tears rolled down from her eyes and mucus trickled from her nostrils.
Ch'ing Wen hastily put the bottle away. "It's dreadfully pungent!" she laughed. "Bring me some paper, quick!"
A servant-girl at once handed her a pile of fine paper.
Ch'ing Wen extracted sheet after sheet, and blew her nose.