“The exact instance of the moment escapes my recollection.”  Probably Hoa-mi was by no means willing that one of studious mind should associate her exclusively with water-buffaloes.  “Is it related in the Classics?”

“Possibly, though in which actual masterpiece just now evades my grasp.  The youth referred to was on the point of abandoning a literary career, appalled at the magnitude of the task before him, when he encountered an aged woman who was employed in laboriously rubbing away the surface of an iron crowbar on a block of stone.  To his inquiry she cheerfully replied:  ’The one who is thus engaged required a needle to complete a task.  Being unable to procure one she was about to give way to an ignoble despair when chance put into her hands this bar, which only requires bringing down to the necessary size.’  Encouraged by this painstaking example Tsung returned to his books and in due course became a high official.”

“Doubtless in the time of his prosperity he retraced his footsteps and lavishly rewarded the one to whom he was thus indebted,” suggested Hoa-mi gracefully.

“Doubtless,” admitted Lao Ting, “but the detail is not pursued to so remote an extremity in the Classic.  The delicate poise of the analogy is what is chiefly dwelt upon, the sign for a needle harmonizing with that for official, and there being a similar balance between crowbar and books.”

“Your words are like a page written in vermilion ink,” exclaimed Hoa-mi, with a sideway-expressed admiration.

“Alas!” he declared, with conscious humility, “my style is meagre and almost wholly threadbare.  To remedy this, each day I strive to perfect myself in the correct formation of five new written signs.  When equipped with a knowledge of every one there is I shall be competent to write so striking and original an essay on any subject that it will no longer be possible to exclude my name from the list of official appointments.”

“It will be a day of well-achieved triumph for the spirits of your expectant ancestors,” said Hoa-mi sympathetically.

“It will also have a beneficial effect on my own material prospects,” replied Lao Ting, with a commendable desire to awaken images of a more specific nature in the maiden’s imagination.  “Where hitherto it has been difficult to support one, there will then be a lavish profusion for two.  The moment the announcement is made, my impatient feet will carry me to this spot.  Can it be hoped—?”

“It has long been this one’s favourite resort also,” confessed Hoa-mi, with every appearance of having adequately grasped Lao Ting’s desired inference, “Yet to what number do the written signs in question stretch?”

“So highly favoured is our unapproachable language that the number can only be faintly conjectured.  Some claim fivescore thousand different written symbols; the least exacting agree to fourscore thousand.”

“You are all-knowing,” responded the maiden absently.  With her face in an opposing direction her lips moved rapidly, as though she might be in the act of addressing some petition to a Power.  Yet it is to be doubted if this accurately represents the nature of her inner thoughts, for when she again turned towards Lao Ting the engaging frankness of her expression had imperceptibly deviated, as she continued: