"Master Secundus," replied Ch'ing Wen with a sardonic smile, "your temper is of late dreadfully fiery, and time and again it leaks out on your very face! The other day you even beat Hsi Jen and here you are again now finding fault with us! If you feel disposed to kick or strike us, you are at liberty, Sir, to do so at your pleasure; but for a fan to slip on the ground is an everyday occurrence! How many of those crystal jars and cornelian bowls were smashed the other time, I don't remember, and yet you were not seen to fly into a tantrum; and now, for a fan do you distress yourself so? What's the use of it? If you dislike us, well pack us off and select some good girls to serve you, and we will quietly go away. Won't this be better?"
This rejoinder so exasperated Pao-yü that his whole frame trembled violently. "You needn't be in a hurry!" he then shouted. "There will be a day of parting by and bye."
Hsi Jen was on the other side, and from an early period she listened to the conversation between them. Hurriedly crossing over, "what are you up to again?" she said to Pao-yü, "why, there's nothing to put your monkey up! I'm perfectly right in my assertion that when I'm away for any length of time, something is sure to happen."
Ch'ing Wen heard these remarks. "Sister," she interposed smiling ironically, "since you've got the gift of the gab, you should have come at once; you would then have spared your master his fit of anger. It's you who have from bygone days up to the present waited upon master; we've never had anything to do with attending on him; and it's because you've served him so faithfully that he repaid you yesterday with a kick on the stomach. But who knows what punishment mayn't be in store for us, who aren't fit to wait upon him decently!"
At these insinuations, Hsi Jen felt both incensed and ashamed. She was about to make some response but Pao-yü had worked himself into such another passion as to get quite yellow in the face, and she was obliged to rein in her temper. Pushing Ch'ing Wen, "Dear sister," she cried, "you had better be off for a stroll! it's really we, who are to blame!"
The very mention of the word "we" made it certain to Ch'ing Wen that she implied herself and Pao-yü, and thus unawares more fuel was added again to her jealous notions. Giving way to several loud smiles, full of irony: "I can't make out," she insinuated, "who you may mean. But don't make me blush on your account! Even those devilish pranks of yours can't hoodwink me! How and why is it that you've started styling yourself as 'we?' Properly speaking, you haven't as yet so much as attained the designation of 'Miss!' You're simply no better than I am, and how is it then that you presume so high as to call yourself 'we.'"
Hsi Jen's face grew purple from shame. "The fact is," she reflected, "that I've said more than I should."
"As one and all of you are ever bearing her malice," Pao-yü simultaneously observed, "I'll actually raise her to-morrow to a higher status!"
Hsi Jen quickly snatched Pao-yü's hand. "She's a stupid girl," she said, "what's the use of arguing with her? What's more, you've so far borne with them and overlooked ever, so many other things more grievous than this; and what are you up to to-day?"
"If I'm really a stupid girl," repeated Ch'ing Wen, smiling sarcastically, "am I a fit person for you to hold converse with? Why, I'm purely and simply a slave-girl; that's all."