But Miss Li looked up at her defiantly and said:  “Not so!  This is the son of a noble house.  Once he rode in grand coaches and wore golden trappings on his coat.  But when he came to our house, he soon lost all he had; and then we plotted together and left him destitute.  Our conduct has indeed been inhuman!  We have ruined his career and robbed him even of his place in the category of human relationships.  For the love of father and son is implanted by Heaven; yet we have hardened his father’s heart, so that he beat him with a stick and left him on the ground.

“Every one in the land knows that it is I who have reduced him to his present plight.  The Court is full of his kinsmen.  Some day one of them will come into power.  Then an inquiry will be set afoot, and disaster will overtake us.  And since we have flouted Heaven and defied the laws of humanity, neither spirits nor divinities will be on our side.  Let us not wantonly incur a further retribution!

“I have lived as your daughter for twenty years.  Reckoning what I have cost you in that time, I find it must be close on a thousand pieces of gold.  You are now aged sixty, so that by the price of twenty more years’ food and clothing, I can buy my freedom.  I intend to live separately with this young man.  We will not go far away; I shall see to it that we are near enough to pay our respects to you both morning and evening.”

The “mother” saw that she was not to be gainsaid and fell in with the arrangement.  When she had paid her ransom, Miss Li had a hundred pieces of gold left over; and with them she hired a vacant room, five doors away.  Here she gave the young man a bath, changed his clothes, fed him with hot soup to relax his stomach, and later on fattened him up with cheese and milk.

In a few weeks she began to place before him all the choicest delicacies of land and sea; and she clothed him with cap, shoes and stockings of the finest quality.  In a short time he began gradually to put on flesh, and by the end of the year, he had entirely recovered his former health.

One day Miss Li said to him:  “Now your limbs are stout again and your will strong!  Sometimes, when deeply pondering in silent sorrow, I wonder to myself how much you remember of your old literary studies?” He thought and answered:  “Of ten parts I remember two or three.”

Miss Li then ordered the carriage to be got ready and the young man followed her on horseback.  When they reached the classical bookshop at the side-gate south of the Flag tower, she made him choose all the books he wanted, till she had laid out a hundred pieces of gold.  Then she packed them in the cart and drove home.  She now made him dismiss all other thoughts from his mind and apply himself only to study.  All the evening he toiled at his books, with Miss Li at his side, and they did not retire till midnight.  If ever she found that he was too tired to work, she made him lay down his classics and write a poem or ode.