remained silent, but the child was unwilling to leave his mother
and kept striking the scholar’s wife face with his little hands, the scholar’s wife was piqued
and said,
“You can keep him with you until you’ve had breakfast.”
The kitchen-maid urged the young woman to eat as much as possible, saying,
“You’ve been eating very little for a fortnight. You are thinner than you first came
here. Have you looked at yourself in the mirror? You have to walk thirty li today, so finish
this bowl of rice!”
The young woman said listlessly, “You really kind to me!”
It was a fine day and the sun was high in the sky. Qiu Bao continued to cling to his
mother. When the scholar’s wife angrily snatched him away from her, he yelled at the top
of his voice, kicking the elderly woman in the belly and pulling at her hair. The young
woman standing behind, pleaded,
“Let me stay here until after lunch.”
The scholar’s wife replied fiercely over her shoulder,
“Hurry up with your packing, you’ve got to leave sooner or later!”
From then on, Qiu Bao’s cries gradually receded from the young woman’s hearing.
While she was packing, she kept listening to his crying. The kitchen-maid stood
beside her, comforting her and watching what she was putting into her parcel. The young
woman then left with the same old parcel she had brought with her when she first came.
She heard Qiu Bao crying as walked out of the gate, and his cries rang in her ears
even after she had plodded a distance of three li.
Stretching before her lay the sun-bathed country road which seemed to be as long as
the sky was boundless. As she was walking along the bank of a river, whose clear water
reflected her like a mirror, she thought of stopping there and putting an end to her life by
drowning herself. But, after sitting for a while on the bank, she resumed her journey.
It was already afternoon, and an elderly villager told her that she still had fifteen li to
go before she would reach her own village. She said to him,
“Grandpa, please hire a litter for me. I’m too tired to walk.”
“Are you sick?” asked the old man.
“Yes, I am.” She was sitting in a pavilion outside a village.
“Where have you walked from?”
She answered after a moment’s hesitation,
“I’m on my way home; this morning I thought I would be able to walk the whole
way.”
The elder lapsed into sympathetic silence and finally hired a litter for her.
It was about four o’clock in the afternoon when the litter carriers entered a narrow and
filthy village street. The young woman, her pale face shrunken and yellowed like an old
vegetable leaf, lay with her eyes closed. She was breathing weakly. The villagers eyed her
with astonishment and compassion. A group of village urchins noisily followed the litter,
the appearance of which stirred the quiet village. ②②網②
One of the children chasing after the litter was Chun Bao. The children were shouting
and squealing like little pigs when the litter carriers suddenly turned into the lane leading
to Chun Bao’s home. Chun Bao stopped in surprise. As the litter stopped in front of his
home, he leaned dazed against a post and looked at it from a distance. The other children
gathered around and craned their necks timidly. When the young woman descended from
the litter, she felt giddy and at first did not realize that the shabbily dressed child with
disheveled hair standing before her was Chun Bao. He was hardly any taller than when she
had left three years before and just as skinny. Then, she blurted out in tears,
“Chun Bao!”
Startled, the children dispersed. Chun Bao, also frightened, ran inside the house to
look for his father.
Inside the dingy room, the young woman sat for a long, long while. Both she and her
husband were speechless. As night fell, he raised his head and said,
“You’d better prepare supper!”
She rose reluctantly, and, after searching around the house, said in a weak voice,
“There’s no