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She would have liked to tell Pei-Hang to go about his business, but she knew if the red cord had really been tied between his foot and Yun-Ying's, it would not be safe to do that. "Come inside," she said at last; "I'll see what I can promise."
Pei-Hang, when he had finished staring at the Lake of Gems, walked round it, and wondered how he was to carry it down the mountain and across the plains to Chang-ngan. Then he sat down on the ground to think the matter over, and the Genii, even his own good-natured Geni, laughed at him again. "Come!" they said. "If you like to fill the mortar with precious stones, you may do it.
But Wang Chih did not tell them his adventures just then; only when darkness fell, and the Feast of Lanterns began, he took his part in it with a merry heart. The Lake of Gems Once upon a time, so very long ago that even the great-grandfathers of our great-grandmothers had not been born, there lived in the city of Kwen-lu a little Chinese boy named Pei-Hang.
But on the bridge he fell asleep again, so tired was he with the many sleepless nights he had spent in study. While he slept he had a dream, in which a tall and beautiful maiden appeared to him, and showed him her right foot, round which a red cord was bound. "What is the meaning of it?" asked Pei-Hang, who could hardly take his eyes away from her face to look at her foot.
But Yun-Ying was quite real; only her mother, who knew something of magic, had given her the power of stepping in and out of people's dreams just as she chose. Pei-Hang got up and went on his way, thinking of Yun-Ying all the time. It was still very hot, and he grew so thirsty that he went to a little hut by the roadside, and asked an old woman who was sitting in the doorway to give him a drink.
He looked very sorry as he said it, for Pei-Hang had been his favourite pupil. "I will start to-morrow, Master," replied Pei-Hang, obediently. "I will leave the city by the Golden Bridge." "No, you must go by the Indigo Bridge, for there you will meet your future wife," said Pin-Too. "I was not thinking of a wife," observed Pei-Hang, with some dismay. And Pin-Too wrinkled up his eyes and laughed.
As for the pestle and mortar of jade, it stood under the peach tree; and no one could lift it into the cottage, and no one could have pounded magic drugs in it, if they could have got it inside. Pei-Hang had one red seed left in his box, and he meant to have thrown it into the mortar as soon as he had taken all the precious stones out, and made it small again.
"It is a mile wide, and the fish in it are six yards long, and covered with spikes like porcupines." "How did you get across?" inquired Pei-Hang. "I? Oh, I can fly," said the Geni. "And I can jump," retorted Pei-Hang, sturdily.
Then Pei-Hang journeyed for seven days, and came to his father's and mother's house, and told them all that had happened since he had left them, and he gave them a ruby, a diamond, an emerald, a sapphire, a pearl, and a pink topaz, a jewel for every white seed his mother had given him, and each as large as a sparrow's egg.
The nearest alligator made a snap at the seed as it sank in the river, but he missed it, and the next minute he found himself no bigger than a lizard, sitting at the bottom of a stream not half a yard across. At the other side of it Pei-Hang was met by one of the Genii, who had come down from his snow-peak to see who it was that had dared to play such tricks with the three mighty rivers.
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