KAI LUNG'S GOLDEN HOURS
munificence," replied Kai Lung. "Hear now my simplifying way. In place of the cited wrongs—which, after all, are comparatively trivial matters, as being merely offences against another or in defiance of a local usage—substitute one really overwhelming crime for which the penalty is sharp and explicit."
"To that end you would suggest?" Uncertainty sat upon the brow of both Shan Tien and of Ming-shu.
"To straighten out the entangled thread this person would plead guilty to the act—in a lesser capacity and against his untrammelled will—of rejoicing musically on a day set apart for universal woe: a crime aimed directly at the sacred person of the Sublime Head and all those of his Line."
At this significant admission the Mandarin's expression faded; he stroked the lower part of his face several times and unostentatiously indicated to the two attendants that they should retire to a more distant obscurity. Then he spoke.
"When did this—this alleged indiscretion occur, Kai Lung?" he asked in a considerate voice.
"It is useless to raise a cloud of evasion before the sun of your penetrating intellect," replied the story-teller. "The eleventh day of the existing moon was its inauspicious date."
"That being yesterday? Ming-shu, you upon whom the duty of regulating my admittedly vagarious mind devolves, what happened officially on the eleventh day of the Month of Gathering-in?" demanded the Mandarin in an ominous tone.
"On such and such a day, benevolence, three score
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