Six Records of a Floating Life (Chapter one: Wedded Bliss 16)

    Yun then had such fun looking at herself in the mirror. I dragged her along and we stole away together to the Temple. For a long time nobody in the Temple could detect it. When people asked, I simply said she was my boy cousin, and people would merely curtsy with their hands together and pass on. Finally, we came to a place where there were some young women and girls sitting behind the flower show. They were the family of the owner of that show, by the name of Yang. Yun suddenly went over to talk with them, and while talking, she casually leant over and touched the shoulder of a young woman. The maid-servants nearby shouted angrily, "How dare the rascal!" I attempted to explain and smooth the matter over, but the servants still scowled ominously on us, and seeing that the situation was desperate, Yun took off her cap and showed her feet, saying “Look here, I am a woman, too!" They all stared at each other in surprise, and then, instead of being angry, began to laugh. We were then asked to sit down and have some tea. Soon afterwards we got sedan-chairs and came home.

    When Mr.Ch'ien Shihchu of Wukiang died of an illness, my father wrote a letter to me, asking me to go and attend the funeral. Yun secretly expressed her desire to come along since on our way to Wukiang, we would pass the Taihu Lake, which she wished very much to see. I told her that I was just thinking it would be too lonely for me to go alone, and that it would be excellent, indeed, if she could come along, except that I could not think of a pretext for her going. "Oh, I could say that I am going to see my mother," Yün said. "You can go ahead, and I shall come along to meet you." "If so," I said, "we can tie up our boat beneath the Bridge of Ten Thousand Years on our way home, where we shall be able to look at the moon again as we did at the Ts' anglang Pavilion."

    This was on the eighteenth day of the sixth moon. That day, I brought a servant and arrived first at Hsükiang Ferry, where I waited for her in the boat. By and by, Yün arrived in a sedan-chair, and we started off, passing by the Tiger' s Roar Bridge, where the view opened up and we saw sailing boats and sand-birds flitting over the lake. The water was a white stretch, joining the sky at the horizon. "So this is Taihu!" Yün exclaimed. "I know now bow big the universe is, and I have not lived in vain! I think a good many ladies never see such a view in their whole lifetime." As we were occupied in conversation, it wasn't very long before we saw swaying willows on the banks, and we knew we had arrived at Wukiang. I went up to attend the funeral ceremony, but when I came back, Yün was not in the boat. I asked the boatman and he said, "Don' t you see some one under the willow trees by the bridge, watching the cormorants catching fish?" Yün, then, had gone up with the boatman's daughter. When I got behind her, I saw that she was perspiring all over, still leaning on the boatman's daughter and standing there absorbed looking at the cormorants. I patted her shoulder and said, "You are wet through." Yün turned her head and said, "I was afraid that your friend Ch'ien might come to the boat, so I left to avoid him. Why did you come back so early?" "In order to catch the renegade!" I replied.