“It suffices,” agreed Hwa-mei.  “Bear well your part.”

“Still,” suggested Kai Lung, hoping to detain her retiring footsteps for yet another span, “were it not better that I should fall short at the test, thus to enlarge your word before your fellows?”

“And in so doing demean yourself, darken the face of Shan Tien’s present regard, and alienate all those who stand around!  O most obtuse Kai Lung!”

“I will then bare my throat,” confessed Kai Lung.  “The barbed thought had assailed my mind that perchance the rings of precious jade lay coiled around your heart.  Thus and thus I spoke.”

“Thus also will I speak,” replied Hwa-mei, and her uplifted eyes held Kai Lung by the inner fibre of his being.  “Did I value them as I do, and were they a single hair of my superfluous head, the whole head were freely offered to a like result.”

With these noticeable words, which plainly testified the strength of her emotion, the maiden turned and hastened on her way, leaving Kai Lung gazing from the shutter in a very complicated state of disquietude.

       The Story of Chang Tao, Melodious Vision and the Dragon

After Chang Tao had reached the age of manhood his grandfather took him apart one day and spoke of a certain matter, speaking as a philosopher whose mind has at length overflowed.

“Behold!” he said, when they were at a discreet distance aside, “your years are now thus and thus, but there are still empty chairs where there should be occupied cradles in your inner chamber, and the only upraised voice heard in this spacious residence is that of your esteemed father repeating the Analects.  The prolific portion of the tree of our illustrious House consists of its roots; its existence onwards narrows down to a single branch which as yet has put forth no blossoms.”

“The loftiest tower rises from the ground,” remarked Chang Tao evasively, not wishing to implicate himself on either side as yet.

“Doubtless; and as an obedient son it is commendable that you should close your ears, but as a discriminating father there is no reason why I should not open my mouth,” continued the venerable Chang in a voice from which every sympathetic modulation was withdrawn.  “It is admittedly a meritorious resolve to devote one’s existence to explaining the meaning of a single obscure passage of one of the Odes, but if the detachment necessary to the achievement results in a hitherto carefully-preserved line coming to an incapable end, it would have been more satisfactory to the dependent shades of our revered ancestors that the one in question should have collected street garbage rather than literary instances, or turned somersaults in place of the pages of the Classics, had he but given his first care to providing you with a wife and thereby safeguarding our unbroken continuity.”

“My father is all-wise,” ventured Chang Tao dutifully, but observing the nature of the other’s expression he hastened to add considerately, “but my father’s father is even wiser.”