While they were still chatting, they heard people talking in the outer apartments, and lady Feng speedily inquired who it was. P'ing Erh entered the room to reply. "Lady Hsüeh," she said, "has sent sister Hsiang Ling over to ask me something; but I've already given her my answer and sent her back."
"Quite so," interposed Chia Lien with a smile. "A short while ago I went to look up Mrs. Hsüeh and came face to face with a young girl, whose features were supremely perfect, and as I suspected that, in our household, there was no such person, I asked in the course of conversation, Mrs. Hsüeh about her, and found out eventually that this was the young waiting-maid they had purchased on their way to the capital, Hsiang Ling by name, and that she had after all become an inmate of the household of
