Chapter 64

A cicada shrilled in the tree next door. Both windows of the old lady's main room stood open, and the daylight came through the onion-green gauze and filled the room. It was full of aunties and young wives, all talking, and none of it to the point.

Guo-shi, Wan-shi, Gao-shi, Lü-shi, and old Madam Tao with her daughter-in-law Huang-shi were all there. Each had a little basket in her lap, at the sewing no house can do without. But the baskets held no plain patching now, as in the old days. Now they held good cloth, and here and there a bit of silk, and the embroidery-hoops carried fashionable flowers and green leaves, worked in fine colored thread.

Their hands had won back the fine needlework that should always have been theirs. It was the good season, and a little vanity was in them yet, so one or two had quietly dyed a fingernail red with balsam.

The ancestral hall was closed to them, so they all liked to come and sit at the old Chen house, and the old lady liked their coming. When they went out to burn incense, they went together by arrangement, a dozen carts and a great crowd of them setting off in a bustle, closer than blood kin.

Many together make a force. Of Quanhou Street's seven main lanes and dozen-odd side-lanes, the women of Guard Lane got on the best. Let the old lady cough a few times and feel poorly, and by early morning seven or eight women would be at the door with food-boxes and a cooling drink for her. And if some spiteful house in one of the other six lanes tried to bully a widow, these old sisters rose against it as one. Small as each family's office was, no one in Quanhou Street dared provoke them.

They were respected wherever they went. In a single spring and summer they had all become the "grandmothers," the mistresses of their houses, and no one dared call them this-shi or that-shi to their faces anymore.

Quanhou Manor was called Quanhou Street now, and the official households there had slowly formed their circles. Only Madam Qiao had worked her way in with the Board of Rites lane. The rest kept close with the Board of War lane folk, since at root they were all Board of War people, and it was handier for helping one another when trouble came.

Yang-shi set a few stitches in a new plain skirt, then looked up and asked the blunt, honest Lü-shi: "This Scholar Lu your son goes to, truly only three hundred cash?"

Lü-shi looked up and smiled: "Aye! One meal at home in the morning, one at the teacher's in the afternoon, three hundred cash a month."

That set Yang-shi thinking. Her own children went to the old teacher on Academy Street in the old city. Each cost five hundred cash a month at least, with no meals, and they carried their own dry rations besides.

So she asked around it: "And is this Teacher Lu any good?"

Lü-shi was taken aback, then said plainly: "How would I know? We can't read a word ourselves. What's it to us whether he's good or bad? I don't even ask. Let it be what it is. With that dead ghost of a father behind them, they'll come to nothing much anyway. I don't look for them to pass examinations. I only want them not to be blind fools with their eyes open! We're not short the few coins. If they want to study, I'll pay. And I'll tell you, the two brats come home reciting without a stop, a real nuisance. But the two gentlemen who rent from me, and their good wife, say they recite well."

Then Lü-shi remembered something and laughed, easy and free and light of heart.

Man or no man, it was all much the same to her as ever. She got on well enough now by her own doing, with her feet planted good and firm.

The Chen family was in mourning too, and didn't mind mourning-widows at the door, so the women came often, and every one of them treated it as a mother's home to go back to.

Sitting on the kang copying her sutra, Qi Qian'er heard them and smiled, easy in her heart.

Here was another thing unlike the last life. Seven or eight of this circle were widows, sure enough. In that other life they'd had no one to lean on, and were driven at last into the broken earth-huts of the back-manor to scrape by. Each one carried a whole body of grief, circling day in and day out over accounts of five cash and ten. Never mind schooling a child. Even half-filling their bellies was in doubt.

It was different now. Every house had a decent courtyard of its own, and a well of its own besides.

Everyone knew the water-vein was cut over at Qingfeng. There were rivers near enough, but the river-water wasn't as sweet as Quanhou Street's well-water, and the households along the banks dumped all sorts of rubbish in it. So any family with particular ways drank only well-water, never river-water.

Every dawn a long line of water-carts came in by the small road behind Quanhou Street, and bought their drinking-water from the well-households at ten cash a cart.

Not every house sold water. But this was a place where officials' private mansions stood thick together, and living among so many officials seemed to sharpen everyone's wits. Which of Yang-shi's little band of widows was there whose house didn't send out a good twenty-odd carts of water a day? Water-selling was a fine trade, and good for another three years yet.

And there was this. The houses over in Qingfeng were cheap, but couldn't be let for want of water. So the ordinary officials serving in Qingfeng's offices were glad to come looking for rooms in the best of it, Quanhou Street, and glad to pay more rent for them. The water was handy, and the neighbors all of a kind.

So these widowed women, though they'd lost their men, could live off their own strength, and live in real comfort. They lived in part of the great mansions in their hands and let out the rest, and it brought in four or five strings of good cash a month.

And under the Chen family's shelter, no one bullied them.

Early in the year Qi Qian'er had reminded them again to buy land while it was cheap, a few hundred cash the mu. So the women turned their rent-money into land, one and all. No live money came back from it yet, but it gave their hearts something steady to stand on.

A house and a field, and a person stands on solid ground.

With the water-selling on top, they had a hundred or two hundred cash coming in every day, which came to several strings a month. So keeping a house and sending the children to school was well within their means. Brush and ink and paper and inkstone, the ordinary sort, they could all afford.

Something came to old Madam Tao's mind. She set down her work and said, full of distaste: "That ancestral hall was everyone's place to start with, and these fine gentlemen are a wicked lot. They've taken our own hall, and now our children have to go all the way to the old city for school?"

Poor grandson of hers. Her little "Top-Scholar" had to run to the old city before daylight every day. Spring, summer, autumn, it was bearable. Come winter it was a torment.

The others all nodded, and off they went on the old tune, the daily cursing begun again.

At the mouth of Quanhou Street there had been a great ancestral hall of some house or other. The several families had put up money and built it into the Three-Rites Academy, and hired a few famous old scholars, deep-read men, to lecture there. A good thing, that. Only the tuition ran a touch dear, two strings a month, and no board with it.

The gentlemen had fitted the academy out to the pattern of Yanjing's good schools, and the well-off would never haggle over a few strings. But Yang-shi's sort did haggle. Qingfeng's cheapest school took three cash a day, no more. Around bustling Yanjing there were more and more men of letters, so a xiucai who meant to keep a family had to take thirty pupils at least to hold his house together.

The gentlemen who founded the school had meant well, but they knew nothing of poor folk's hardships. Still less did they see that Quanhou Street, thick with officials as it was, had its ordinary households too. They'd set the tuition at the highest in all Qingfeng, and still thought it too low. For the masters' meals and keep were shared out by the head, and where a family had a few pupils boarding, whatever the masters ate and used was portioned out per head.

Two strings a month, and that to help feed and clothe four or five old masters besides. That old Madam Tao would agree to it would be a wonder. There was no help for it, and no wish to fight over it, so scarcely a child of this circle went to the Three-Rites Academy.

A cool breeze swept through, and the scent of the courtyard osmanthus blew in on the light gauze. Second-Moon, all smiles, rolled up the bamboo blind. Fourth-Moon brought in the teapot and fresh sweetmeats from the kitchen, and set out three and five kinds, heaped full, on the table across from the kang, for the aunties to eat as they liked.

The old Chen house could spare these few coins now. The old lady hardly minded the cost, and was glad to see them eat well. She even remembered which of them liked what, and would note it down and have it made often for her old friends.

More and more she was like the matriarch of an official house.

Gao-shi set down her hoop, poured herself some tea, and ate a sweetmeat with it. When she'd eaten she wiped her mouth, content, and said to the old lady: "Old Madam, that midwife your house engaged is Midwife Min, the best in Qingfeng, isn't she? Her hands are a wonder! Ten strings for the one delivery. Tsk, she grows grander by the day. And I saw Fourth Master come home a few days back, such state, such a bearing, more and more a man of consequence. The great lords I used to see in the prefecture-city were just so, no more."

She'd meant it in praise of the Chen family's rise. But the old lady still would not let Madam Qiao into the courtyard, and asked nothing of whatever went on next door. She'd long since learned her lesson. A smile was the thing! A family's shame is never, ever to be aired in public.

Madam Qiao, for her part, never brought up the bad blood with the old house. She had two madams of the Board of Rites lane to keep company with now, so she looked down her nose and wouldn't play with these old sisters. And so everyone supposed the two branches were slowly making it up.

Of all the houses of Quanhou Street, only the two chessboard courts had their own theater-yard. As a rule, to pass the time you hired a storyteller or a singing-girl to the house. But for a birth, a death, an illness, or anything to be done up in style, you had to go to one of Quanhou Street's three old temples.

The Dragon-King Temple, the Granny Temple, and the Three-Saints Temple had all had their stages to begin with. Now, each having taken a head-fee from the families, they'd been done up fine again.

Gao-shi loved a play above all things, and said now, all eagerness: "Ai! Who else but the Tang house of the chessboard court! Their Second Master's got a concubine's son, and it's to be three days of opera, they say. Of Quanhou Street's ten play-days a month, his house can book half. A fine troupe brought in from the prefecture, and the painted-face pieces a marvel, they tell me! They sent a card to my house first thing yesterday. It was that Mi-woman of their second branch who came, and said she'd kept me a good seat..."

The old lady looked up at Second-Moon. Second-Moon glanced at the stack of cards piled on the kang-chest and nodded: "It came long ago, brought by the second branch's concubine's own maid..."

Qi Qian'er put in, without looking up: "More and more improper. We're not going. Tomorrow I'll find you a few drum-ballad singers out of Qingfeng to cheer you up."

Then Qi Qian'er lifted her face and glanced round the room, and it so scared Gao-shi that she said it over and over: "Not going! I'm not going, I know it. Save the first madam's card, one mustn't take a concubine's card."

Qi Qian'er smiled and glanced at the reluctant old lady. The old lady glared back, pressed her lips, and went on working her prayer-beads.

In the last life no one had given the old lady a card, and still she'd not missed a single show. Every time she'd gone and sat at the very back, watching on sufferance, a pitiful thing, with the old ladies from the outer streets. In those days she hadn't understood, and went as she pleased. Now she understood, and truly could not go.

The old Tang house was a house in disorder. The second branch's proper wife did not run things. A concubine held the reins. And this roomful of women, poor or not, were every one a mistress who kept her own house and sat in her own hall. Take a concubine's card, and you stood a rank lower whenever you went out among people. It was, plainly, to fail in your own self-respect.

The Tang house had come up to the capital from the prefecture, married well, and got themselves a great mansion. The head son, Tang Jiuyuan, held real power in a bureau of the Board of Punishments, so several branches of the family had moved into the chessboard court together. They hadn't managed to squeeze into the capital itself either. Four generations under one roof, several branches crowded together, and all the mean little strife among them. It would ease by and by, but while the old man and old lady of the house lived, Tang Jiuyuan had to bear it.

Gao-shi had her say, and the whole room fell in behind her, cutting the Tang house down: "That house! We'll not go! It's only you that's greedy, you'll not go blind for missing the one show..."

Which grieved Gao-shi past bearing, and set her arguing away.

Qi Qian'er found it funny and laughed out loud. The Tang house had truly done good, coming forward to mend the roads and found the school. But they'd offended the biggest band of women in all Quanhou Street, and so, whatever the Tang house did, this band would never come and cheer it on.

All but the one opera-mad Gao-shi, who, like as not, would put on a disguise and go to watch even from no seat of honor.

She'd been caught at it several times.

The women knew what Qi Qian'er was laughing at, and laughed along with her. They were easy and merry when She Jixiang's wife came running in.

Jixiang's wife made her courtesy to the madams, then called to Qi Qian'er with a note of urgency: "Madam! Master Yu's mother, and his wife and children, they've come! They're all at the mouth of the lane!"

Qi Qian'er was overjoyed. She set down her brush: "Quick! Come at last, I reckoned it must be near time! Quick, go call Shi Jie and his wife, and Dadun and Xiaodun too..."

Fourth-Moon came over, all smiles, and helped Qi Qian'er on with her shoes.

Jixiang's wife gave her an arm: "They've longed for their own master these months. You needn't call them, they went out to the lane-mouth long ago to bring them in."

The escort-party sent to fetch Yu Qingguan's family had set out at the start of the third month, and only now, at the start of the eighth, were they back. From the length of the road alone you could reckon how hard the trek had been.

Seeing Qi Qian'er sweep out with seven or eight people at her heels, the women praised her to the old lady: "Our young Madam, more and more she looks a mistress who keeps a house. Set beside the mistress of the chessboard court, she doesn't fall a hair short."

And the old lady was proud too: "Her house? Put all their mistresses together, can they hold a candle to my Qian'er? That one has no one in her eye. You see her ride in and out, and she won't so much as give the road to a woman older than herself. Ill-bred, that's what! Hmph!"

Now this was a misunderstanding.

The old lady wanted country manners. But Tang Jiuyuan's wife was a true-born daughter of a great house. She was the third daughter of the Grand Tutor, Li Zhang, and Li Jinggui's own elder sister. Would such a one look down on the people of Quanhou Street? Not possible. She'd married down in marrying into the Tang, and the whole family upheld her and courted her as their clan-wife. And she rarely went out, and when she did go visiting it was in Yanjing.

If she esteemed anyone, this Tang eldest madam esteemed just two people in all Quanhou Street, Qi Qian'er and the old lady. A pity, then, that no one stood between the two famous mistresses to make the introduction, and Qi Qian'er didn't go visiting in Yanjing, so no acquaintance ever grew up between them.

But leave the Tang house aside, and speak of the six of the Yu family.

On a night at the start of the fifth month, Yu Qingguan's old mother, his half-deaf wife Ding Yuniang, and their four children, Yu Dani, Yu Erni, Yu Shoutian, and Yu Youtian, were asleep at home. They couldn't afford lamp-oil, so they went to bed early. And with the good son gone and the unfilial ones neither asking nor caring, home was a hard place and the day's work a bitter toil. So of course they were no sooner down than they'd all dropped off.

Yu Qingguan's youngest, Yu Youtian, was only seven this year, and already went with his granny and mother to work the fields they rented.

It had been an ordinary day. And then, well! In the first half of the night, people came quietly into the courtyard.

Qi Qian'er had engaged one of the best escort-agencies in Qingfeng, the old chief-escort of the Ma-family agency. She paid the silver in full, and before he set out she laid it all out for him, the good and the bad of it. If Yu Qingguan's elder brother and sister had shown any decency, he was to give them silver and bring the mother along. If they were unfilial, he was to steal the family out.

For the poor houseful of them had held on, and held on hard, on the strength of the half-deaf Ding Yuniang alone, who led the two older children through the toil of it. And the old lady wept daily, until she'd near wept herself blind.

Now, Qi Qian'er and Yu Qingguan had said to drug them in the night and steal them quietly away. But the old Ma-chief was on in years and had seen much of the world, and did the thing with a flourish. He set off knock-out smoke on all the neighbors and walked straight into the courtyard. To bundle them off in a muddle was no way to do it, he reckoned. If any private store were hidden in the house and left behind, the old lady would fret, and he'd have to go back for it and add to the trouble.

Yu's old mother, that night, was in terror and in joy both. Learning her son was alive, and an official in the capital besides, she wept and could not stop. And learning her son would not have her bring the elder brother and sister, she was cut to the heart.

This old lady had been meek and downtrodden all her life, and could never so much as manage a daughter-in-law. And yet at the pinch she saw it clear. She must leave the eldest son behind, come what may, rather than let him drag the youngest down. That a mother could be wounded so far, you may judge from it how heartless Yu Qingguan's brother and sister had been.

Yu Qingguan's home was a poor, broken-down place. Told to pack, the six of them gathered a few plain clothes, a genealogy, and a few ancestral tablets. In the whole house, top to bottom, there wasn't so much as one laying-hen. It was truly done in the time of an incense-stick, and clean and brisk they went off after the old Ma-chief.

Her husband seven years gone, the Yu family had every tie to the old home, to kin, to clan, cut clean through.

Qi Qian'er had given silver enough, so the Ma-chief brought two decent carts, and found two agency-women to go along and wait on them. Once away from home, the Yu family pressed on three and five hundred li before they dared stop to set themselves right, and to eat the first full meal of their lives.

Jolted and jarred and sorely tried the whole way, still every one of them put on a few jin. Day in and day out they felt that this, this was the finest living under heaven.

And who could have foreseen it? Coming into Qingfeng, they were struck dumb by the bustle of the streets. And when at last they came into Quanhou Street, and the Ma-chief led them to the mouth of Guard Lane, the whole family got down from the cart and stood dazed, and took themselves for dreaming. Look at the people going to and fro here. Even the beasts hauling the carts in this street were of a finer, dearer sort than any they'd seen the whole way along.

Yu Qingguan's eldest daughter, fifteen-year-old Yu Dani, would remember this day as long as she lived...

That day she helped her granny down from the cart, and the family stood at the lane-mouth and peered longingly in, their hearts going up and down with dread. What they dreaded there was no telling. Only, it was dread.

The old Ma-chief got down, joy on his own face, and said to the granny: "Aiya, old lady! This journey's been no small thing, truly. But here you are, home! Home to your son's house!"

The Yu granny's hands and feet trembled. She looked about her: "Home? And where's Qingguan? Where's my son? How is it he hasn't come to meet me?"

The old chief laughed aloud: "You mustn't blame him. It's no rest-day, and your Master Yu's on duty in Yanjing. Wait a little, the young Madam will be out directly to meet you."

The Ma-chief had praised the Chen house's eldest madam the whole road. He said how able she was, how she got things done, how the two of the Chen couple had lent their aid to win the house and the family land back. And that getting them out at all was that young Madam's own notion.

Yu Dani, hearing it the whole way, felt for Qi Qian'er both worship and nearness.

She'd longed for it the whole road, and now she'd come to the very door, and grew afraid. She stood there like a simpleton, not knowing what to do with herself, and the hand that held her mother's shook and shook.

Ding Yuniang, half-deaf, spoke with effort. Her eyes brimming, she comforted her daughter, forcing the words out one at a time: "Niu. Don't. Be. Afraid. Your. Dad's. Here..."

At that the tears ran down Yu Dani's face, and back came the day her father had gone. She was the eldest at home, and her heart had sunk to the bottom of the river. Off her guard a moment, her little brother had gone wailing out after him, crying the whole way, Dad, don't go, Dad, come back...

But her father would not turn his head. He only walked on, and on, until in her memory the whole of him had no face left, only a back, and that growing blurrier and blurrier...

Her father gone, her granny old, her mother sick, her little brothers and sister small, Yu Dani was young in years, but young as she was her heart had aged first. She was no mute, and yet she'd grown as silent as her mother. There was nothing at all in her head. Day in and day out she only bore it, and endured.

From that time no day was not hard. The hardship gathered into a bitter water, a bitterness you could not dredge up however you tried, and she went on eking out those bitter days. But one thing there was. No matter who said her father was dead, or that he'd struck it rich in some far place and married into another house, Yu Dani never gave up hope. She believed all along that her father lived, that he would come home, sooner or later...

Every day, when she climbed the high ground to gather firewood, she'd stand and look off the way her father had gone, and try hard to call up his face. She couldn't remember it any longer. But her father had a pair of hands broad as fans, and he could lift her high, high enough to reach the green fruit in the trees...

Yu Dani peered longingly ahead. The road before her was wider than the finest road of the town back home. And her father was on this very road, somewhere along it.

She fell to imagining it. She would go into this lane step by step, and push open some one door that was called home. And then they would sit down together, slowly, in the courtyard, and try to call up her father's face again...

The paving of the lane was very clean, cleaner than the top of the kang back home. On either side stood doors set slantwise facing one another, doors past all imagining, so big, so tall. Was someone like her to live behind doors like these?

Surely this was a dream?

The cool breeze carried off the fret of the summer heat, and Yu Dani caught a noseful of fragrance. Only later did she learn it was the osmanthus trees along the lane.

And after she married, wherever she went with her husband, the first thing she did was plant an osmanthus in the courtyard.

That night Yu Dani learned these were her own family's servants, the one at their head called Shi Jie, and Auntie Shi, and Dadun, and Xiaodun. From that day they'd be bound to her family and never leave it, and even in death their bones would lie no great way from her granny's, and her father's and mother's.

Yu Dani had good eyes, and, trembling with feeling, she looked all about her and saw every leaf and every blade of grass clear and sharp... The very drops running off the leaves were clean past telling. One slid down and fell into her eye.

Then, at the far end of the lane, a great many people came, all at a trot, out to meet them. Every one was smiling, men and women and old folk... Fifteen years she'd lived, and all the smiles the world owed this family were paid up in this one day, in full.

And dimly, at the end of the lane, came at last the Old Madam and the young Madam they'd longed for so.

Truly Yu Dani felt it, that at one glance she knew them for her own, her family's own kin. All the good the world owed her family, she could see it in these two, in their faces and their eyes.

The old lady's hand was warm. Not minding how grubby the girl was, she stroked her hair with a trembling hand: "You've, you've come, then! Hard, was it? Home now... come back... there's always a coming-home... how good it is..."

And the young Madam was like an empress off the opera stage. Even her walk had dignity in it. She came step by step, giving her Old Madam an arm, and when she'd come up close she smiled, and all at once she put out her arms and gathered in the girl's mother... and the mother wept, hoarse and broken.

Both of Yu Dani's ears were in a daze, and she heard her own-flesh Aunt Qian'er say to them: "You're home now!"

In that moment, whether her father came or not was no matter at all. There was nothing left in her whole sight but this little aunt, who had propped them up and lent them courage.

"And is this our Dani?"

The little aunt caught her hand and stroked it to and fro, not minding it in the least.

Yu Dani felt ashamed before her, dark and rough-skinned and grubby as she was... Even her granny said to the little aunt, all apology: "We're grimy things, don't get our dirt on you..."

But the granny hadn't finished before the little aunt had her in her arms: "What are you saying, old lady? I look at this child and it's as if I look at a daughter of my own..."

Eh, and only a few days on did Yu Dani learn that this little aunt who called herself her "mother" was but one year older than she was. And yet, for all that, she was someone to lean on.

For, well! that fool of a father, who was only ever a back, there was no leaning on him.

And so Yu Dani, led by the hand, walked slowly toward home... The road home was easy, and strange. She could even feel, through her thin soles, the little dips and rises of the paving. And afterward, as she slowly grew old, she would forever dream of the road home. It ought, she felt, to feel just as the soles of her feet felt now, not slippery, but solid, and sweet, and every step a real step.

Home was the second courtyard on the left, and its great gate stood so high they all had to tip their heads back to see the top of it.

Shi Jie and his wife went ahead and helped push the great gate open, and it swung slowly wide, till its back struck the blue-brick wall...

Her hand was caught again. It was her mother, her face all tears, holding on to her for courage in her fear.

Yu Dani followed on, her eyes not enough to take it all in. The brickwork patterns of this courtyard were so lovely... Into the main hall, and was this whole set of vermilion furniture her own family's?

They were brought to the main hall, and sat and ate in their own home, ringed round with aunties waiting on them, heaping their bowls, laying food before them... And afterward the little aunt drew her back to a side-room at the rear.

The family had long known they were coming, so all was ready beforehand... And when she'd looked her fill, shocked and dazed, Yu Dani came to her own room?

Her own room?

The little aunt said to her, all smiles: "And this is our young miss's own room!"

Was she a young miss now?

Yu Dani didn't know what to do with herself. She only followed her granny and her mother about, dumbly, looking here and there, at a room stuffed full of furniture... all of it hers?

At the last the little aunt opened a cabinet that reached the ceiling, and pointed at the clothes and shoes folded inside, packed full: "Your dad, now, he's a real fool. Every time he came home he'd fold all your clothes over again..."

That said, she brought a good-sized box out of the cabinet, set it on the kang, and called them over to look.

The little aunt said to her: "Young miss, come quick and see. These are all the ornaments your dad bought you with his own hands."

Yu Dani slowly let go her mother's hand. Without knowing she was crying, for she'd been crying all along, she who had never eaten sugar came at last to know the taste of sweetness...

The rich little box was opened. It had three tiers, and a mirror inside besides. Yu Dani took one glance at herself in it and quietly shut the mirror.

Qi Qian'er pressed back a smile and drew at her: "Never mind, our young miss has good bones to her. Nurse it slow, and one day you'll be a beauty!"

Then she slowly drew open the drawer of the little box.

Yu Dani's eyes went wider and wider, and both her temples throbbed.

Was this hers?

The drawer of the box came open. One tier held little fine-porcelain pots of scented powder. The second held silver ornaments of every make. Yu Dani had no words for it. Her whole head was full of only, so many, so many, so many, and at the last she thought: how lovely they are. Surely I'm dreaming. Then let me die dreaming, right here.

And when the third tier came open, and there lay a white-jade bracelet, and a bracelet of bright gold... Yu Dani heard the little aunt say to her granny: "Your son's ten thousand times the better of that fool of mine. See, he brought all these back. He said our young miss was of an age now, and there weren't many days left him to dote on her... Every time he came home off duty in Yanjing he'd add a piece to this box. He said he must lay by the more for his Niuzi, in case she married far off and, her dowry being small, her husband's people bullied her... What silly words they were..."

Qi Qian'er hadn't finished speaking when, from beside her, there came a heart-rending cry.

"Dad...!"

She cried: "Dad... come home quick..."

And then came a rush of hurried feet in the courtyard. Someone seemed to trip, and someone was shouting, the master's home...

Everything stood still...

And her father was crying out in the courtyard: "Niu! Niu! Niu, don't cry, Dad's here~ here! Dad'll lift you up to reach the fruit to eat..."

Yu Dani sat down on the floor, weeping and laughing at once, and thought: Dad's a fool. I was eight when he went, I was big already. Dad~ can never lift me up anymore...

There was one thing Yu Dani always wondered at, and many years on she asked her father: Dad? Those years you never saw me, how did you know it was me crying?

And her father said: My Niu, when she cries she only ever wails away, yi-yi-yi. Such a fool of a thing, she can't even cry it in two notes!