Six Records of a Floating Life (Chapter three: Ups and downs 06)

    When Yun heard of this, she wept and said, "It is all my fault that we have displeased our parents. I know that if I kill myself so that you may go, you will not be able to bear my death, and if we separate, you will not be able to bear the parting. Let's ask Mrs. Huas servant to come in, and I will try to get up from bed and have a talk with him."

    She then asked Ch'ingchun to assist her to get up and escort her outside her bedroom, where she asked the messenger from Mrs. Hua whether his mistress had sent him specially to enquire after her illness, or he was merely taking a message on his way.

    "My mistress has long heard of your illness," replied the servant, "and was thinking of coming personally to see you, but refrained because she thought she had never been here before. When I was leaving, she told me to say that if you do not mind living in a poor country home, she would like you to come to her place to recuperate, in order to fulfil a pledge of hers with you in her childhood days."

    The messenger was referring to a girlhood pledge between Yun and Mrs.Hua, when they were doing embroidery work together under the same lamplight ,that they should assist each other in sickness or trouble.

    "You go back quickly then, and tell your mistress to send a boat secretly for us within two days," she instructed the servant.