Chinese Literature

Buttoning up the child’s clothes, she put the ten silver coins into her pocket. :

The scholar’s wife also came in, and, staring hard at the back of the retreating scholar, she turned to the young woman, saying,

“Give me Chiu Pao, so that he won’t cry when you leave.”

The young woman remained silent, but the child was unwilling to -

leave his mother and kept striking the scholar’s wife’s 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 when 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're really kind to me 12

It was a fine day and the sun was high in the sky. Chiu Pao 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,

“Tet 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, Chiu Pao’s cries gradually receded from the young woman’s hearing.

While she was packing, she kept listening to his crying. The kitchenmaid stood beside her, comforting her and watching what she was putting into her parcel. When the young woman left she did so with the same old parcel she had brought.

She heard Chiu Pao erying as she 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, Iam.” She was sitting in a pavilion outside a village.

“Where have you walked from?”

She answered after a moment’s hesitation,

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