here the similarity ends,
for, on his part, he has never felt towards you the remotest degree of
affection. Nevertheless, he is always desirous, as you say, that persons
should regard their spoken word, and as you seem to hold a promise
from the Chief Mandarin of Fow Hou regarding marriage-gifts towards
his daughter, he would advise you to go at once to that person.
A misunderstanding has evidently arisen, for the one whom you are
addressing is merely Chan Hung, and the words spoken by the Mandarin
have no sort of interest for him--indeed, he understands that all that
person's acts have been reversed, so that he fails to see how anyone
at all can regard you and your claim in other than a gravity-removing
light. Furthermore, the maiden in question is now definitely and
irretrievably pledged to this faithful and successful one by my side,
who, as you will doubtless be gracefully overjoyed to learn, has
recently disposed of a most ingenious and diverting contrivance for an
enormous number of taels, so many, indeed, that both the immediate and
the far-distant future of all the persons who are here before you are
now in no sort of doubt whatever.'

"At these words the three persons whom he had interrupted again turned
their attention to the matter before them; but as Pe-tsing walked away,
he observed, though he failed to understand the meaning, that they all
raised certain objects to their eyes, and at once became amused to a
most striking and uncontrollable degree."

CHAPTER V. THE CONFESSION OF KAI LUNG

Related by himself at Wu-whei when other matter failed him.

As Kai Lung, the story-teller, unrolled his mat and selected, with grave
deliberation, the spot under the mulberry-tree which would the longest
remain sheltered from the sun's rays, his impassive eye wandered round
the thin circle of listeners who had been drawn together by his uplifted
voice, with a glance which, had it expressed his actual thoughts, would
have betrayed a keen desire that the assembly should be composed of
strangers rather than of his most consistent patrons, to whom his stock
of tales was indeed becoming embarrassingly familiar. Nevertheless, when
he began there was nothing in his voice but a trace of insufficiently
restrained triumph, such as might be fitly assumed by one who has
discovered and makes known for the first time a story by the renowned
historian Lo Cha.

"The adventures of the enlightened and nobly-born Yuin-Pel--"