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Updated: June 6, 2025
The story-teller made obeisance towards the Mandarin, whose face meanwhile revealed a complete absence of every variety of emotion. "Have I your genial permission to comply, nobility?" he asked. "The word is spoken," replied Shan Tien unwillingly. "Let the vaunt be justified." "I obey, High Excellence. This involves the story of Hien and the Chief Examiner."
"That may have been so at the time," admitted Fang, with dog-like obstinacy, "but it was not then known that you had pledged yourself to Hien Nan for tenscore embellished plates of porcelain within a stated time, and that our services would therefore be essential to your reputation.
"Yet by what incredible perversity does it arise, venerable Thang-li, that a leisurely and philosophical stroll should result in a person of your dignified proportions occupying so unattractive a position?" said Hien, who appeared to be too ingenuous to suspect Thang-li's craft, in spite of a warning glance from Fa Fei's expressive eyes.
"After the name referred to, someone in authority had inscribed the undeniable comment 'As usual." "The omen is a most encouraging one," exclaimed Hien, throwing aside all his dejection. "Hitherto this person's untiring efforts had met with no official recognition whatever. It is now obvious that far from being lost in the crowd he is becoming an object of honourable interest to the examiners."
"Alas, O my dragon-hearted one," she replied at length, "I have indeed dared to read the scroll, but how shall this person's inelegant lips utter so detestable a truth?" "It is already revealed," said Hien, striving to conceal from her his bitterness.
"The proposal is a flattering one," continued Hien, "but my hands are bound down by the decree of the High Powers, for among the most inviolable of the edicts is it not written: 'Do the lame offer to carry the footsore; the blind to protect the one-eyed?
"Then do not suffer the rice to grow above your ankles," she continued, when Hien had modestly replied that six days with good omens should be sufficient, "but retiring to your innermost chamber bar the door and digest this scroll as though it contained the last expression of an eccentric and vastly rich relation," and with a laugh more musical than the vibrating of a lute of the purest Yun-nan jade in the Grotto of Ten Thousand Echoes she vanished.
It was part of his commercial equipment, an asset of his boyhood spent among the peasants on the family estate in Galway. Father Bourassa fanned himself with the black broadbrim hat he wore, and looked benignly but quizzically on the wiry, sharp-faced Irishman. "You t'ink her heart is leetla. But perhaps it is your mind is not so big enough to see hien?"
The other of the two persons was Hien, a youth of studious desires and unassuming manner.
"In that case," remarked Hien, with conscious humiliation, "nothing but a really sublime tolerance can have restrained you from upbraiding this obscure competitor as a thoroughly corrupt egg." "On the contrary," replied Thang-li reassuringly, "I have long regarded you as the auriferous fowl itself.
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