“If,” said Jasmine to herself as the woman took her departure, “Miss King is able to penetrate the meaning of my verses, she won’t like them.  Without saying so in so many words, I have told her with sufficient plainness that I will have nothing to say to her.  But stupidity is a shield sent by Providence to protect the greater part of mankind from many evils; so perhaps she will escape.”

It certainly in this case served to shield Miss King from Jasmine’s shafts.  She was delighted at receiving the verses, and at once sat down to compose a quatrain to match Jasmine’s in reply.  With infinite labour she elaborated the following: 

“Sung Yuh on th’ eastern wall sat deep in thought,
And longed with P’e to pluck the fragrant fruit. 
If all the well-known tunes be newly set,
What use to take again the half-burnt lute?”

Having copied these on a piece of silk-woven paper, she sent them to Jasmine by her faithful attendant.  On looking over the paper, Jasmine said, smiling, “What a clever young lady your mistress must be!  These lines, though somewhat inconsequential, are incomparable.”

But, though Jasmine was partly inclined to treat the matter as a joke, she saw that there was a serious side to the affair, more especially as the colours under which she was sailing were so undeniably false.  She knew well that for Sung Yuh should be read Miss King, and for P’e her own name; and she determined, therefore, to put an end to the philandering of Miss King, which, in her present state of mind, was doubly annoying to her.

“I am deeply indebted to your young lady,” she said, and then, being determined to make a plunge into the morass of untruthfulness, for a good end as she believed, added, “and, if I had love at my disposal, I should possibly venture to make advances toward the feathery peach [a nuptial emblem]; but let me confess to you that I have already taken to myself a wife.  Had I the felicity of meeting Miss King before I committed myself in another direction, I might perhaps have been a happier man.  But, after all, if this were so, my position is no worse than that of most other married men, for I never met one who was not occasionally inclined to cry, like the boys at ‘toss cash,’ ’Hark back and try again.’”

“This will be sad news for my lady, for she has set her heart upon you ever since you first came to the inn; and when young misses take that sort of fancy and lose the objects of their love, they are as bad as children when forbidden their sugar-plums.  But what’s the use of talking to you about a young lady’s feelings!” said the woman, with a vexed toss of her head; “I never knew a man who understood a woman yet.”

“I am extremely sorry for Miss King,” said Jasmine, trying to suppress a smile.  “As you wisely remark, a young lady is a sealed book to me, but I have always been told that their fancies are as variable as the shadow of the bamboo; and probably, therefore, though Miss King’s sky may be overcast just now, the gloom will only make her enjoy to-morrow’s sunshine all the more.”