be Mr Ts'èng. What an enviable lot his is! – young, rich, talented, the husband of a charming wife, if report speaks truly, and the owner of such a lovely house and gardens as those yonder. That willow clump is just the spot where Su Tungp'o would have loved to have written sonnets; and that mass of waving colour is enough to make Tsau Fuhing rise from his grave and seize his paint-brush again."
"I don't deny," replied Mr Tso, "that Ts'èng's lot has fallen to him in pleasant places. But though I should much like to exchange possessions with him, nothing would induce me to exchange personalities. He never seems really happy. His is one of those timid and fearful natures which are always either in the depths of misery or in the highest of spirits. He is so sensitive that the least thing disturbs him; and he is so dependent on outside influences, that a smile or a frown from Fortune either makes or mars him. And then, between ourselves, I have my doubts as to his scholarship. It is true that he passed his B.A. examination with honours, but it did so happen that his uncle was the chief examiner on the occasion; and though I don't charge either uncle or nephew with anything underhand, yet my son tells me that others are not so charitable."
"You are all, I think, hard on our friend," said the magistrate. "I don't know much of him, but I have always heard him spoken of as a man of learning and ability. However, I have written to invite him to my picnic on the lake to-morrow, and we will then try him at verse-making, and see what he is really made of."
That the magistrate's admiration for the Ts'èng gardens was fully justified, every admirer of brilliant colouring would readily admit. Indeed no fairer prospect could be imagined, and as the autumn sun sent its slanting rays through the waving branches of the willows and oaks, and added lustre to the blood-red leaves of the maples, it was difficult to suppose that anything but peace and content could reign in so lovely a spot.
But Tso was not far wrong in his estimate of Ts'èng's character; and in addition to the bar to happiness presented by its infirmities, there was one dire misfortune which took much of the brightness out of his life. Though he had been married six years he had but one child, and that a daughter. It was true that he was devotedly fond of the little Primrose, as he called her, but nothing could make up to him for the failure of a son to carry on the succession of his name and fortune, and to continue the worship at the family graves.
At the very moment that the magistrate and his friend were passing down the lake, Ts'èng and his wife, Golden-lilies, were sitting in a pavilion, which stood in the midst of the flower-garden, surrounded by a profusion of blue hydrangeas, China asters, pomegranates, citrons, jasmines, peonias, honeysuckles, and other flowers indigenous to the favoured regions of Central China, watching Primrose chasing a curly-coated puppy along the crooked paths as well as her poor little cramped feet would allow her, and trying to catch the leaves which were beginning to sprinkle the earth with specks of every hue; and they were still so employed when a servant handed a letter to Ts'èng, who, recognising from the envelope that it was from the magistrate, opened it with an expression of nervous anxiety. His trepidation, however, turned into pleasure, as he read as follows: –
