"Is it likely," nurse Sung hastily observed, "that a dame like you doesn't know what manners mean? Your daughter has been in these rooms for some time, so she should, when she is about to go, knock her head before the young ladies. She has no other means of showing her gratitude. Not that they care much about such things. Yet were she to simply knock her head, she would acquit herself of a duty, if nothing more. But how is it that she says I'm going, and off she forthwith rushes?"
Chui Erh overheard these words, and felt under the necessity of turning back. Entering therefore the apartment, she prostrated herself before the two girls, and then she went in quest of Ch'iu Wen and her companions, but neither did they pay any notice whatever to her.
"Hai!" ejaculated the woman, and heaving a sigh—for she did not venture to utter a word,—she walked off, fostering a grudge in her heart.
Ch'ing Wen had, while suffering from a cold, got into a fit of anger into the bargain, so instead of being better, she was worse, and she tossed and rolled until the time came for lighting the lamps. But the moment she felt more at ease, she saw Pao-yü come back. As soon as he put his foot inside the door, he gave way to an exclamation, and stamped his foot.
"What's the reason of such behaviour?" She Yüeh promptly asked him.
"My old grandmother," Pao-yü explained, "was in such capital spirits that she gave me this coat to-day; but, who'd have thought it, I inadvertently burnt part of the back lapel. Fortunately however the evening was advanced so that neither she nor my mother noticed what had happened."
Speaking the while, he took it off. She Yüeh, on inspection, found indeed a hole burnt in it of the size of a finger. "This," she said, "must have been done by some spark from the hand-stove. It's of no consequence."
Immediately she called a servant to her. "Take this out on the sly," she bade her, "and let an experienced weaver patch it. It will be all right then."
So saying, she packed it up in a wrapper, and a nurse carried it outside.
"It should be ready by daybreak," she urged. "And by no means let our old lady or Madame Wang know anything about it."