Chapter 51

Old people make friends easily. A few days into spring, the old lady and the old lady of the Hu house in the next lane, Old Madam Xu, were fast friends.

Both old ladies came of farming stock, so their talk never ran dry. Both had eaten great bitterness and borne great wrongs. So each had to lay out her hardships to the other, and speak up for herself, all those years of bearing children and enduring, tooth and nail, just to stay alive.

Old people nag, and one thing told over and over wears on the listener. Old Madam Xu's sons, grandsons and daughters-in-law all kept clear of her. She'd been lonely for years, and it had soured into a sickness of the heart, and made her a harsh old woman.

Not daring to cross her sons, grandsons and granddaughters, Old Madam Xu kept her three daughters-in-law under her thumb. They made their morning greetings. Servants or no servants, they must all set their own hands to one family breakfast together. And the husbands' and children's clothes were not to be left to servants either. They must cut and sew them by hand.

At any rate, they already hated her, and behind her back called her the old wolf-hag who wouldn't hurry up and die.

Well then, a wolf-hag she'd be!

Old Madam Xu's reasoning was very simple. You say the bitterness I bore was the same every mother bears? Then you go round the same as me.

Now things were fine. She'd string out a tale, and Chen's old lady would string out one to match. A mother's hardship is always the same, so they doted on each other, made much of each other, then showed off their finery to each other. A little gossip, this house and that, a laugh here and there, and by day's end they were bright and easy again, and ate two extra bowls a meal.

The two old ladies lost themselves in it, and every day toddled off out to play.

As for the Hu daughters-in-law, the way they looked at their old lady now, you'd think she was the one who'd saved their lives.

They'd had it so hard.

Before, for the sake of the family's face, they hadn't dared let the old lady out to socialize. Sat down among a company of fine ladies, she'd go on, never mind the occasion, never mind who was there, about her early widowhood, and all the filthy business of tending three sons' shit and piss.

Mr. Hu especially. As a boy his stomach was weak and he was always soiling his pants, and Old Madam Xu loved that story best of all, to show how hard she'd washed clothes at the river in the dead of winter.

And now, come to the capital from Shaoshang, Mr. Hu had been in despair the whole road. No wonder that the first time Chen Dasheng saw him he'd thought the fellow gaunt, sour and joyless.

Mr. Hu was in fact an able official, and rather liked by his superiors, which was how he'd come by the perk of a big mansion at Quanhou Manor.

But who'd have thought, this place was a treasure indeed.

The very next lane had a Chen old lady cut from the same cloth, and she a sixth-grade old Lady besides, and the way she carried on was only fiercer than his own mother's. Everything was hers by right. Yet her grandson's wife never took the least offense, just indulged her like a child.

Mm. Well, with someone to sit below her now, let the old mother go out, then. Neither could laugh at the other.

As the two old ladies played on, old Madam Tao from the lane-mouth joined them too.

Old Madam Tao's life was nowhere near as good as theirs, so she was mercilessly reduced to the thing they showed off against.

But she had her wits about her, and knew how to flatter. None was better at running herself down to praise another, and with this to balance things out, old Madam Tao became the very favorite of both the Chen and the Hu old ladies.

Early one morning the old lady dressed as usual in the new clothes her grandson's wife had made, five fresh layers inside and out, and even embroidered-edged socks.

She loved to look fine now. She couldn't match the wealthy Old Madam Xu, but out-dressing old Madam Tao every day was no trouble. And to hold her place in the middle she had Qi Qian'er do up her hair.

Qi Qian'er rubbed in the hair-oil, gathered it into a coil and set three silver flat-pins in it. But when it came time to go, the old lady turned reluctant, and stood eyeing Qi Qian'er's arm without budging.

One look and Qi Qian'er knew her mind. She'd been through all six of her own bracelets, and felt shabby going out today.

"All right, all right!" Qi Qian'er slipped off her own jade bracelet and put it on the old lady.

Tea-set and snack-basket in one hand, the old lady's little stool in the other, Qi Qian'er walked out with her, and said as they went: "Wear it for now, just bear with it a few days. I've sewn you a new lined jacket of satin. I'll put silver openwork buttons on it. In a day or two I'll send Scabby into town to see whether the silver and gold shops have opened. If they have, we'll get a master out to the house and make you a few sets of jewelry fit to be seen in."

The old lady was well on in years. Wanting to go out with a little dignity was surely no great thing, easy enough. There was money in the house.

But at the word money, the old lady took off the bracelet without another word and pushed it back on Qi Qian'er.

"I've enough to wear! All those bracelets."

That said, she went back in and came out in her own old bracelets and held them up for Qi Qian'er to see: "These are new too, I have my own! It's you who daren't spend the money!"

Her heir son lived right next door. She could take neither his food nor his money. That couple traded only in a foul, spiteful tongue, and had won themselves a name besides for dutifully keeping the old mother next door.

If now she went scraping things off Scabby's couple as well, she'd be no kind of person at all.

Her back wouldn't straighten, her heart wouldn't settle. There was simply no spirit in it.

Some nights the old lady lay tossing and thinking. If Scabby hadn't earned her a patent of rank, a grade above Fourth's now, so she needn't eat her meals under that couple's roof, that would be a human life worth living.

And if she'd never had the patent?

Sometimes she thought that too. What if, to save the money back then, she'd never betrothed Qian'er? What would have become of them?

The thought set her very teeth chattering.

Lost in it, she locked the door, and grandmother and granddaughter had barely stepped into the lane when they heard Chen Siniu's affected scholar's cough: "Ahem! Mm! Mm!"

Qi Qian'er heard it and pulled the old lady on.

A few steps, and Chen Siniu called out behind them, cross and reproachful: "Mother!"

The old lady, too, pretended not to hear, and strode past Qi Qian'er, meaning to slip off first.

But she hadn't gone three steps when Chen Siniu blocked her path. Not looking at Qi Qian'er, his eyes brimming, he called Mother again: "Mother, why must you do this to yourself? We're all one family. When the son loses face, do you think it's only the son's face? It's the whole family's!"

He cut a glance at Qi Qian'er's face. Qi Qian'er gave him a dark little smile, and at once he moved round to the other side and went on pleading with the old lady: "Mother, save your son, I beg you. Another step and I'm at the end of the road! Xique's mother is with child again. Next year you'll have a new grandson to hold. If Father's spirit knew below, how glad he'd be! And if you won't help me, tomorrow my whole family goes hungry! Mother!"

Chen Siniu was born timid. The stronger you were, the more he cowered. He only ever bullied his own mother.

But the old lady was not what she had been. Seeing his shamelessness, she spat: "Pah! I'll not go and speak for you! You've the ability, you go speak! I'll wager you haven't the nerve! Eat the dung you cooked yourself! Hold a bowl the size of your ability! You think it's still those early years? That I couldn't pin anything on you for want of a witness? The filthy things you did, you think there's a soul who doesn't know?"

Elder scolding elder. Qi Qian'er wouldn't add a single word. She only watched Chen Siniu, quiet.

This one was capable too. In no more than a few days, having wormed his way into the Board of Works, Chen Siniu had changed into a respectable scholar-gentleman's robe, a black scholar's headwrap on his head. And though the early-spring days weren't warm, he even carried a folding fan.

Ah, a marvel fit for the histories!

The truth was this. Before the New Year, Chen Siniu had taken his letter of recommendation to Yanjing, and lobbied the whole festival through, well pleased with himself, and spent silver beyond counting, and got, in the end, a seventh-grade office-director's post in the Board of Works.

The man he'd found did hold real power, and had meant at first to send him to a waterworks post. But when the presiding official asked after him, it turned out he couldn't read a single character! So what could he do, he could do nothing at all in the Board of Works.

And it was different now from before. The old dynasty had fallen over the affair of the waterworks. To put another illiterate on the waterworks would be asking for trouble.

So the presiding official turned it over and over and, for his relative's sake, found Chen Siniu a good berth in the end: a seventh-grade director's post in the Firewood-and-Charcoal Bureau of the Board of Works' Qingfeng office, and gave him no real duties whatever, only the name of it, and a salary to draw.

The Firewood-and-Charcoal Bureau was a fat place. Take but one thing: forty li out of Yanjing you came to Baiquan Mountain, and two hundred li more along the range, and all down that road the Board of Works had twenty charcoal-burning yards. Set Chen Siniu over any one of them and it would drip oil.

But he couldn't read, couldn't reckon, and knew nothing of the charcoal trade. So all he could do was hold the name.

Chen Siniu even knew it himself: he could hold it three years at the most. A bottom grade in the merit-review, and forget going on as an official, he might be turned out on the spot. He'd not come up by the scholar's road. Lose a real vacancy, and to scheme his way back he'd have to go work the connections at the Board of Personnel again for a substitute post. A military man turned civil, and a recommended official at that, he'd be the easiest man in the world to sweep aside.

He'd wept, dry-eyed, with worry, worry, worry, and then joy dropped from heaven.

His youngest nephew, born under a lucky star, had somehow become the Emperor's favorite, the apple of His Majesty's eye, and the adopted son of the great eunuch She Qingling, no less.

The first time he heard his nephew's name in others' envious mouths, Chen Siniu was thunderstruck. And once the shock had settled into certainty, he was afraid.

For this reason: the tie between uncle and nephew was only a thing for show. In private they'd long since torn the pretense away. Whether Stinky Melon, Stinky Egg, Stinky Bolt or Scabby, not one of them thought anything of their own uncle.

Scabby's father above all. After the business of Chen Siniu's third brother, Chen Sanniu, there was no more uncle-and-nephew feeling left in the world.

His third brother had served in the Tan house too, but under Tan Shilin. And Tan Shilin was, after General Tan the Second, the second most in the Emperor's eye among the Tan.

Years before, when the Retired Emperor was in peril at Ningzhong Commandery, Tan Shilin had led fifty soldiers back to the rescue. The Retired Emperor came home, but the greater part of the soldiers lost their lives. It was Chen Siniu who went to collect the death-money, and the one man pardoned and spared was Madam Qiao's former husband.

All of them under the Tan banner. Chen Siniu reckoned his nephew must know the whole of his third brother's affair. But what of it? A man who won't act for himself, heaven and earth will destroy!

Afterward, there'd truly been a spell when he dared not face his nephews. But his own superior kept him like a coin-jar, working his terror of death, threatening him without end, and to stay alive, Chen Siniu had gone, under the guise of supporting the old mother, to squeeze each of the nephews in turn.

He'd thought it through: who knew whether any of these people would even live? At worst, they'd die, and he'd burn a few extra offerings to make it up to them!

Who'd have known four would live in the end, and the niece Dingxiang too, and she was no better than the rest.

And wasn't it a good thing he was alive? He was the one survivor of the second generation. Never mind squeezing a little money, if he himself came to grief, wouldn't they put up the silver to save him? Why were they, one and all, so blind to human feeling!

Ah, people! Once your dignity's gone, little by little you throw the whole thing over.

What else could he do? Chen Siniu felt himself no loser. At the least, his brothers had all died and he had lived. No face, then no face, he'd never meant to keep any. He too had suffered bitter years, and had a seventh-grade post at long last. Was he to turn back into a mud-legged peasant? And there was another child in Madam Qiao's belly. Was his own child to live at the mercy of other people's looks?

Chen Siniu schemed for days, and in the end took Madam Qiao's counsel: whatever it cost, he must get himself a post with real duties. A hollow post, held by whoever, meant certain death.

And how to get a post with real duties in the Board of Works? Simple enough. Let uncle and nephew take one turn together past the Yanjing yamen gate, and there'd be no shortage of men rushing to curry favor. The effect might well be better still.

But Chen Siniu dared not so much as speak to his nephew, let alone ask him for anything.

What was to be done? Why, he still had his mother!

And so these past days Chen Siniu had tormented the old lady like a man possessed. By day and by night, the moment no one was by, he begged. In the dead of night he'd climb over the wall and squat at the old lady's window to beg.

The one thing Chen Siniu hadn't reckoned on was that the old lady was not what she'd been. Last night he'd no sooner climbed over than she'd flung a basin of cold water over him.

And in the chill of a cold-snap spring!

"Mother!"

Chen Siniu stared piteously at his own mother, and could not have said himself what was in his heart. He'd gone stone-cold through and through now, and felt Heaven unjust, and his mother unjust too.

But his mother, remembering the torment of the night before, could bear no more. She reached out and slapped him full across the face!

Slap!

The clap of it rang down the lane, and roused the lane-mouth.

Old Madam Xu called out in her big voice: "Old Chen! Did somebody take a fall?"

Afraid of being seen, Chen Siniu clapped a hand to his face and darted into the doorway behind him. The old lady grabbed Qi Qian'er and went, and her hand shook as she walked.

Qi Qian'er drew a breath, turned her head and said, smiling: "Don't fret! Don't! I'll think of something!"

Not a tear fell from the old lady. She looked straight ahead and said: "It's all right. Granny saw through it long ago."

At worst, she'd die, but she'd not drag the grandchildren down with her.

Qi Qian'er saw the old lady out of the lane, and there, coming to meet them, was Old Madam Xu from the neighboring Board of Works lane.

Ah, Quanhou Manor's lanes were parceled out even now: the Six Boards and one guard-garrison, no favor to any side, share and share till done, everybody pleased.

Old Madam Xu was in the middle of bragging to old Madam Tao. Seeing the two of them, she didn't rise to greet as old Madam Tao did, but stuck out an arm to show a very thick gold bracelet: "Aiyo! Here at last! Good day, old Lady, young Lady! I'll not get up today, I slept badly last night, in truth!" And she stroked the bracelet on her arm and added: "Washing clothes in the cold water, winters, in my early years, it gave me a bad ailment."

The old lady waved it off, unconcerned: "Get up my foot! What relation are you, to get up? Always these empty airs! No use at all! Ai, age is age. My own feet weren't steady this morning, I near went over just now, these shoes don't sit right!" And she twitched her jacket-skirt a little, to show off her new socks, brocade-edged, and worked with embroidered flowers!

Hmph! Imperially bestowed!

Qi Qian'er laid out the little stool and cushion for the old lady, then set out on Old Madam Xu's table the several fried tidbits she'd made for the old lady that day, and served the hot tea.

When she had it all arranged she smiled and made her courtesy: "The old lady taught me to make these yesterday! Don't be put off that they're fried, they're crisp. Do try them. They won't tax the teeth at all."

Seeing the oil that had gone into them, the old lady's heart gave a pang. But she had to make a show of one who ate such things all the time and cared nothing for them: "Yes, yes, you try them, nothing rare, I'm quite tired of them, you eat, you eat!"

Old Madam Tao took a piece herself, cupping it in her hand as she ate, and when she'd finished praised it hard.

At that Old Madam Xu deigned to come down off her dignity and eat two, and found them, to her surprise, right to her taste. And, pleased, asked without ceremony for the recipe.

But Chen's old lady, being who she was, spat clean in her face on the spot.

Old Madam Xu wasn't the least put out. She smiled and smiled and begged the young Lady instead: "Young Lady, do me a kindness. My two back molars have been loose of late. How long is it since I've had something crisp and savory I could get down? Do me a kindness, spare this old beggar a bit more tomorrow?"

Qi Qian'er laughed behind her hand: "Very well! I made a good deal at home. I'd meant them for my husband to keep his stomach up at the garrison. Send someone along with me and I'll pack you some! Aiya, poor thing, that's the one bad point of age, the teeth go, and the food loses its savor!"

Ahem, this, she knew from her own bones.

At once all three old ladies fell to talking about their teeth.

They chatted and laughed, and off to one side old Madam Tao secretly envied them, and secretly despised herself.

Her sons kept the family in mind now. Her life was ten times better than before. What was there left to want?

She should have been content, and yet, look! Old Madam Xu went out with two serving-women in attendance, and a little maid half-kneeling before her to knead her legs.

And the Chens, not a soul dared say half a bad word of them. Not one servant in the house, yet they'd found a granddaughter's wife who was all luck and all smoothness, a lucky star. And since the girl came, old Chen had fallen clean into a honey-pot.

However grand Old Madam Xu's pomp, no one had what old Chen had, every stitch and thread on her seen to by her grandson's wife, dignified and warm-hearted both.

And yet these two lived so well and grumbled all day long, over what, who could say? But think about it: only the well-off have the leisure to go looking for something to grumble at. Like herself, sitting here, she didn't dare grumble. She had to work at pleasing them.

At that thought old Madam Tao's heart was stopped up. But she laughed away merrily: "I'll tell you both, last night I heard the watch-drum go! Maybe the monks will come round begging alms today!"

The words were scarcely out when the two old ladies fell into a great gladness, and each sent someone home at once to make ready a bowl of fine rice and one of fine flour.

In times like these, whose house held no dead? Who did not wish to send the departed a little merit?

Only in a year of peace do the monks come down the mountain to beat the watch, and go round the good households begging alms by day, and men who've left the world don't eat your alms for nothing.

Never in her life so open-handed, the old lady caught Qi Qian'er's hand: "This means peace at last! This means peace! Go home quick and fetch a bowl, no, ten jin! The very best grain, we'll give ten jin in alms!"

Qi Qian'er knew the sickness in her heart, and patted her hand: "Ai! All right! Wait a moment, I'll be right back!"

That said she turned back to her own courtyard, and coming in the gate saw Chen Dasheng bent over the table copying out a Buddhist sutra.

The fellow was a hard worker too.

Seeing him idle, Qi Qian'er went in and told him: "Go and sit a while with your Fourth Uncle, be quick. By the look of him, he'll have gone round to the old lady's again last night, being hateful! She doesn't want to have to deal with him, and he'd hound your granny to death!"

That said, Qi Qian'er ran to the lower room, took out a basin, and scooped out a good measure of rice and carried it off. She too had longed, day after day, for the monks to come down the mountain, for that would mean it was truly peace at last, all safe and well.

Coming out with the rice, Qi Qian'er saw Chen Dasheng shuffling out in his slippers.

Uneasy about him after all, she called: "Hey!"

Chen Dasheng turned his head: "Hm?"

It was, after all, a crossing of the line, striking an elder!

Qi Qian'er said low: "You, don't hit his face! He's still an elder."

Chen Dasheng smiled, and answered: "I know." And shuffled off in his slippers.

Coming out with the rice, Qi Qian'er saw, at a corner of the lane-mouth, old Madam Tao breaking up the fried tidbits she'd set out and dropping them on the ground.

A poor household that can't manage alms to give a person gives its alms to the ants, and to the little birds instead.

Qi Qian'er made as if she hadn't seen, and carried the rice round her and straight to the Board of Works lane-mouth.

Seeing her come with a basin, the old lady for once said not a word, and even gave her a small smile.

And so the several of them sat at the Board of Works lane-mouth waiting for the monks, and they waited, and waited, all the way to mid-afternoon, and no monk came.

The old lady went home let down, and even her dinner didn't go down easy that evening.

That night, when Qi Qian'er had finished tidying and got into the quilt, she spoke across the cloth curtain to the one at the far end of the big kang: "Chen Scabby!"

It was a good while before Chen Dasheng answered, lazily: "Hm?"

"Did you hit him?"

"Mm!"

"Bad?"

"He'll be laid up three or five days!"

Qi Qian'er sighed softly, wrapped herself in the quilt, and lay turning it over.

Chen Siniu was a coward, but there was a stubborn streak in him too, that came of the old Chen root.

Which was to say, in three or five days, he'd be back to tormenting the old lady?

And the old lady only held on now by main force, gritting it out, gritting it out! One day she'd grit herself sick.

The cloth curtain was yanked aside, and Chen Scabby, in his underclothes, glared at Qi Qian'er: "Wife! I can't take it! I'm dying of holding it in!"

Qi Qian'er was frightened clean out of her wits!

She shot upright, hugged the quilt and backed away, and stammered: "You, you, you can't go back on your word! You promised. And An'er still has to wait. I'm in mourning, have you forgotten? You, you hold it in. Or, I'll," she watched his red, glaring eyes very carefully, "draw you a bucket of well water? Cool you off? Cool off!"

She drew a breath and thought: if he dared try anything, she'd pitch him into the well and cool him off for good.

Chen Dasheng caught her meaning soon enough, and it made him laugh with vexation.

He reached out and dropped the curtain, and said loudly from his end: "What kind of man do you take me for? I meant Granny's business, it's killing me!"

Qi Qian'er let out a long, long breath, sat steadying herself a good while, then got up, went to the curtain and pulled it open.

The way stood suddenly clear. Chen Dasheng raised a brow at the little wife in her scallion-green underclothes, and jeered: "So you can bear to lift the curtain now?"

Qi Qian'er laughed, sheepish: "Look at you, what are you thinking? I only, hey! Isn't it open now? See! It's open! If I don't trust you, who would I trust? I trust you, I do!"

She gave the curtain a hard tug, then dived quick back under the quilt and covered herself up tight.

Chen Dasheng lay down again, helpless. In truth, he'd always felt there was something odd about the way he and his wife got on. He couldn't say where the oddness lay, only that it wasn't right.

Was there anyone else in the world who managed a man like a son? Who wouldn't let a man near her, guarded against him like a thief, and slept every night at the same kang but head-to-foot, with a cloth curtain strung down the middle?

Of course he'd do nothing! But why wouldn't she trust him?

Chen Dasheng had a belly full of questions, and, as luck would have it, his own teacher was a eunuch, so to ask a eunuch such questions would be too cruel.

As for the Emperor, hmph! It wasn't that he thought little of him, but look at the way the harem tore at itself. The man couldn't so much as see to himself.

And his closest friend, Brother Liu, hmph! It wasn't that he looked down on him either, but the man had money and no thought of saving it to live on. He'd handed it all over to keep a pretty girl at the newly-opened book-tower! There'd be a reckoning for him yet.

So who was there to consult? Or perhaps say nothing at all, and just let it run its course. Perhaps all husbands and wives under heaven were like this. No, still not right!

The room was quiet, quiet, until the sound of the monks' watch-drum came from outside, and then, at his side, came the wife's soft, boneless little voice: "You, do you know anyone in the Board of Works?"

Chen Dasheng started, and through his head at once flashed the great square face of Wu Changnian, the Board of Works Minister. He'd never seen a face so squared-off in his life!

"I've spoken a few times with Minister Wu of the Board of Works."

Qi Qian'er blinked, and simply turned away: "That's too big a favor, we can't afford to owe it, leave him be! Think of a smaller one."

Chen Dasheng had no idea what his wife was after. His mind ran over the Board of Works officials, the left and right vice-ministers? Third grade, not small either.

Then he thought of one, and said: "There's a vice-director in the Yu Bureau, surname Lei, I think, he owes me a favor."

Qi Qian'er rolled over and looked at Chen Dasheng, who was looking at her: "The Yu Bureau! Fifth grade's plenty, why didn't you say so! That's the very best. And what favor does he owe you?"

Something came back to Chen Dasheng. He laughed a while, then tilted his head to her: "Don't know, really. Some Board of Works project kept going wrong. The Emperor was angry and had him beaten three times in one day, sixty-odd strokes! I saw the man about to collapse, so I told the brothers laying it on to go lighter, or they'd finish him. Next day he sent someone all the way to the garrison to thank me, said I'd saved his life. The truth is the Emperor's never got over the old-dynasty officials. My teacher's forever at him about it."

On some whim or other, Chen Dasheng went on nattering about the Emperor's foul temper, nattered on until it began to feel wrong, and then bit it off short, and turned, quaking, to look at his wife: "I, I, wife? Why've you gone quiet?"

Qi Qian'er smiled faintly and shook her head: "Nothing. I just hadn't thought you'd come this far."

Chen Dasheng didn't follow: "Come where?"

Qi Qian'er smiled: "It's of no matter. I mean, if you had this Yu Bureau gentleman do something, would he do it?"

Chen Dasheng thought, and said, quite sure: "He'd not dare not, I'd think. You've something for him?"

Qi Qian'er shook her head: "Not for me. For your Fourth Uncle."

At that Chen Dasheng shot bolt upright. In the moonlight his face was a terrible thing. He glared at Qi Qian'er: "You want me to look after Chen Siniu?"

Qi Qian'er sniffed: "What's your hurry? Lie down!"

That last was rather stern.

Chen Dasheng started, remembered his standing in this house, and deflated on the spot. He tipped his head back and pleaded: "Wife, can't we just leave him alone?"

Qi Qian'er said, slow and even, from her side: "Leave him alone? He torments Granny every day. She can't bear it, and one day she breathes her last! Once she's gone you'll leave him alone all the more, and he'll be worse off than ever! And over there it's one child, and two children born, all of them living in the one manor, no rice today, no firewood tomorrow. A poor man loses his face, and he's thrown it all over already. Raise a whole brood, and it goes on down the generations. Never mind the rest, we're all right while we live, but one day, what becomes of our An'er?"

Chen Dasheng blinked. He was used by now to having a son called An'er. His wife was simply that certain of it.

He asked, puzzled: "What do you mean, what becomes of him?"

Qi Qian'er sighed: "Think about it. Our son, a proud child of Heaven! A young master of an official house, bound for great things one day! But dragging along behind him a pack of shameless elders so poor they're all but falling in the dirt, and once we're gone, and there's no one to hold them down, won't those fourth-branch brats drag down our children and our children's children?"

Chen Dasheng thought it over carefully, and wasn't it just so!

What was to be done?

For a moment it was as if it were all really happening. Chen Dasheng turned over a great many bad ends in his mind, and thought at last: why not go out tomorrow and arrange some sort of accident for him?

Or send him off to be the same sort of man as his teacher?

No, no, no! A base creature like Chen Siniu would be an insult to the eunuch's calling. But do him to death, and Granny wouldn't live either.

He was still turning over methods when he heard his wife say: "The fact is, your Fourth Uncle's only afraid of losing the dignity of a seventh-grade master. He's afraid people will look down on him. His trouble is a simple one, really."

Chen Dasheng was worried sick. He turned and fixed his eyes on his wife: "Simple, you've a way?"

Qi Qian'er nodded, sat up, and held up a finger to Chen Dasheng: "Don't wait for him to torment Granny. Tomorrow you slip back to Yanjing quietly and find that vice-director. Just arrange it outright, get him a real post, a bitter, backbreaking one, and don't let him know it was us.

"Your Fourth Uncle has no other gift, but at eating bitterness he's about your equal! And after that, keep him stuck at the seventh grade forever! So long as he draws a salary, his family must feed themselves! And this Quanhou Manor is full of households forever measuring themselves against one another. Hmph! With all that comparing, he'll never live easy! And he'll not dare keep coming to beg you either. Every year, low, unranked officials die by the score. Block his road up and he can make no great trouble. Do you understand?"

Chen Dasheng thought a while, then stuck his thumb up out of the quilt at his wife: "Brilliant! Wife, this is killing a man with a blunt knife, isn't it?"

Qi Qian'er gave a cold little snort: "Am I sick in the head, to keep suffering the wrongs he does us? We'll just grind him down, slow."