Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 16, 2025
"The weather is so bitterly cold," Hsi Ch'un consequently explained smiling, "that the glue, whose property is mainly to coagulate, cannot be moistened, so I feared that, were I to have gone on with the painting, it wouldn't be worth looking at; and I therefore put it away." "I must have it by the close of the year," dowager lady Chia laughed, "so don't idle your time away.
At these words, Pao-yue had no help but to retrace his footsteps. As soon as he reached the Hsin Tang pavilion, he perceived T'an Ch'un, issuing from the Ch'iu Shuang Study, wrapped in a deep red woollen waterproof, and a 'Kuan Yin' hood on her head, supporting herself on the arm of a young maid. Behind her, followed a married woman, holding a glazed umbrella made of green satin.
And when he came to institute minute inquiries, he eventually found out: "that Chia Yue-ts'un was also coming to the capital to have an audience with His Majesty, that it was entirely because Wang Tzu-t'eng had repeatedly laid before the Throne memorials recommending him that he was coming on this occasion to wait in the metropolis for a vacancy which he could fill up; that as he was a kinsman of Chia Lien's, acknowledging the same ancestors as he did, and he stood, on the other hand, with Tai-yue, in the relationship of tutor and pupil, he was in consequence following the same road and coming as their companion; that Lin Ju-hai had already been buried in the ancestral vault, and that every requirement had been attended to with propriety; that Chia Lien, on this voyage to the capital, would, had he progressed by the ordinary stages, have been over a month before he could reach home, but that when he came to hear the good news about Yuan Ch'un, he pressed on day and night to enter the capital; and that the whole journey had been throughout, in every respect, both pleasant and propitious."
While this quartet were finding it an arduous task to understand one another, a servant came to invite them to have their repast, and they eventually crossed over to the front side, and as it was already time for the lamps to be lit, madame Wang, widow Li Wan, lady Feng, Ying Ch'un, T'an Ch'un, Hsi Ch'un and the other cousins, adjourned in a body to dowager lady Chia's apartments on this side, where the whole company spent a while in a chat on irrelevant topics, after which they each returned to their rooms and retired to bed.
"Come back," shouted T'an Ch'un. "Wu Hsing-teng's wife had perforce to retrace her footsteps. "Wait, don't get the money yet," T'an Ch'un remarked. "I want to ask you something. Some of the old secondary wives, attached years back to our venerable senior's rooms, lived inside the establishment; others outside; there were these two distinctions between them.
"Young ladies," she said, straining a smile, "do you perchance have any idea where our lady Secunda is gone to now?" "Go into your senior lady's court and look for her!" T'an Ch'un answered.
"Here no sooner do we, in the exuberance of our spirits, start a poetical society, than the devils and gods bring through their agency, all these people in our midst! There's only one thing however. Have they, I wonder, ever learnt how to write poetry or not?" "I just now asked every one of them," T'an Ch'un replied.
In due course, the festival of the fifteenth of the first moon passed. But, reader, if you have any curiosity to learn any subsequent events, listen to those given in the chapter below. The stupid secondary wife, dame Chao, needlessly loses her temper and insults her own daughter, T'an Ch'un.
So the lack of animation became more than ever perceptible; for the good cheer of Ying Ch'un and her sisters was also damped by the sight of all of them down in the mouth. The natural consequence therefore was that they all left after a very short stay. Lin Tai-yue had a natural predilection for retirement. She did not care for social gatherings.
"Cousin Pao-ch'ai," rejoined T'an Ch'un laughingly, "has the power of observation; no matter what she sees, she remembers." Lin Tai-yue gave a sardonic smile. "As far as other matters are concerned," she insinuated, "her observation isn't worth speaking of; where she's extra-observant is in articles people may wear about their persons."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking