Hsi Jen had flattered herself that the words he had uttered the previous evening amounted to idle talk, and she had long ago dispelled all thought of them from her mind, but when Pao-yü unawares made further allusion to them, she smilingly rejoined: "You are verily somewhat cracked!"
Pao-yü kept silent, and attempted to make no reply. Yet from this time he fully apprehended that the lot of human affections is, in every instance, subject to predestination, and time and again he was wont to secretly muse, with much anguish: "Who, I wonder, will shed tears for me, at my burial?"
Lin Tai-yü, for we will now allude to her, noticed Pao-yü's behaviour, but readily concluding that he must have been, somewhere or other, once more possessed by some malignant spirit, she did not feel it advisable to ask many questions. "I just saw," she consequently observed, "my maternal aunt, who hearing that to-morrow is Miss Hsüeh's birthday, bade me come at my convenience to ask you whether you'll go or not, (and to tell you) to send some one ahead to let them know what you mean to do."
"I didn't go the other day, when it was Mr. Chia She's birthday, so I won't go now." Pao-yü answered. "If it is a matter of meeting any one, I won't go anywhere. On a hot day like this to again don my ceremonial dress! No, I won't go. Aunt is not likely to feel displeased with me!"
"What are you driving at?" Hsi Jen speedily ventured. "She couldn't be put on the same footing as our senior master! She lives close by here. Besides she's a relative. Why, if you don't go, won't you make her imagine things? Well, if you dread the heat, just get up at an early hour and go over and prostrate yourself before her, and come back again, after you've had a cup of tea. Won't this look well?"
Before Pao-yü had time to say anything by way of response, Tai-yü anticipated him. "You should," she smiled, "go as far as there for the sake of her, who drives the mosquitoes away from you."
Pao-yü could not make out the drift of her insinuation. "What about driving mosquitoes away?" he vehemently inquired.
Hsi Jen then explained to him how while he was fast asleep the previous day and no one was about to keep him company, Miss Pao-ch'ai had sat with him for a while.
