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Pao-yue perhaps given you offence?" "What an idea!" exclaimed Pao Ch'ai, with a smile. "It's simply that I've had for the last couple of days my old complaint again, and that I've in consequence kept quiet all this time, and looked after myself."
"Really," she observed, "every remark this girl Lin utters is sharper than a razor! I didn't say anything much!" Pao Ch'ai too could not suppress a smile, and as she pinched Tai-yue's cheek, she exclaimed, "Oh the tongue of this frowning girl! one can neither resent what it says, nor yet listen to it with any gratification!" "Don't be afraid!" Mrs.
"What!" eagerly observed Pao-yue with a grin, when he caught these words, "are there really eight characters too on your necklet, cousin? do let me too see it." "Don't listen to what she says," remarked Pao Ch'ai, "there are no characters on it." "My dear cousin," pleaded Pao-yue entreatingly, "how is it you've seen mine?"
"You have," interposed Pao Ch'ai smiling, "the good fortune, cousin Pao-yue, of having daily opportunities of acquiring a knowledge of every kind of subject, and yet don't you know that the properties of wine are mostly heating?
She also had a daughter, who was two years younger than Hsueeh P'an, and whose infant name was Pao Ch'ai. She was beautiful in appearance, and elegant and refined in deportment. In days gone by, when her father lived, he was extremely fond of this girl, and had her read books and study characters, so that, as compared with her brother, she was actually a hundred times his superior.
"My dear cousin," rejoined Pao-yue, "wait for me to come out from school, before you have your evening meal; wait also until I come to prepare the cosmetic of rouge." After a protracted chat, he at length tore himself away and took his departure. "How is it," interposed Tai-yue, as she once again called out to him and stopped him, "that you don't go and bid farewell to your cousin Pao Ch'ai?"
Our little town was like the pool of Bethesda never had I seen such a multitude of impotent folk. The lame, the halt, and the blind congregated here as if awaiting some miracle. I met them everywhere Zouaves, Turcos, French infantry of the line, in every stage of infirmity. Our town was indeed but one vast hospital orderly, subdued, and tenebrous. Every hotel but our own was closed to visitors and flew the Red Cross flag, displaying on its portals the register of wounded like a roll-call. The streets at night, with their lights extinguished, were subterranean in their darkness, and the single café, faintly illuminated, looked like some mysterious grotto within which the rows of bottles of cognac and Mattoni gleamed like veins of quartz and felspar. We were, indeed, a race of troglodytes, and we were all either very young or very old. Our adolescence was all called up to the colours. There was never any news beyond a laconic bulletin issued from the Mairie at dusk, the typescript duplicates of which, posted up at street-corners, we read in groups by the light of a guttering candle, held up against the wall, and husbanded from the wind, by a little old woman of incredible age with puckered cheeks like a withered apple and hands like old oak. We were not very near the zone of war, yet not so far as to escape its stratagems. Only a day or two before an armoured motor-car, with German officers disguised in French uniforms, paid us a stealthy visit, and, after shooting three gendarmes in reply to their insistent challenge, ended its temerarious career one dark night by rushing headlong over the broken arch of a bridge into the chasm beneath. After that the rigour of our existence was, if anything, accentuated; much was "défendu," and many things which were still lawful were not expedient. Every one talked in subdued tones it was only the wounded who were gay, gay with an amazing insouciance. True, there were the picture postcards in the shops I had forgotten them nothing more characteristically macabre have I ever seen. One such I bought one morning a lively sketch of a German soldier dragging a child's wooden horse behind him, and saluting his officer with, "Captain, here is the horse I have slain the horseman" ("Mon Gabidaine, ch'ai dué le cavalier, foil
"Better keep them and give them to your daughter Pao Ch'ai to wear," observed madame Wang, "and have done with it; why think of all the others?" "You don't know, sister," replied "aunt" Hsueeh, "what a crotchety thing Pao Ch'ai is! she has no liking for flower or powder." With these words on her lips, Chou Jui's wife took the box and walked out of the door of the room.
Pao Ch'ai was brought quite at bay by this remark of his, and she consequently added, "There are also two propitious phrases engraved on this charm, and that's why I wear it every day. Otherwise, what pleasure would there be in carrying a clumsy thing."
On the reverse was written: 1 To exorcise evil spirits and the accessory visitations; 2 To cure predestined sickness; 3 To prognosticate weal and woe. Pao Ch'ai having looked at the amulet, twisted it again to the face, and scrutinising it closely, read aloud: If thou wilt lose me not and never forget me, Eternal life and constant luck will be with thee!
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