They laughed. "We don't think we deserve that kind of evaluation. You just made that up on the spur of the moment."

"There's no need to be so suspicious," said Vesperus. "I have the poems to prove it." He looked up their rankings and evaluations and showed them. After a careful scrutiny, they began to swell with pride. The praise might be a little overdone, they allowed, but at least it was apt, not general criticism of the one-size-fits-all kind.

Only Cloud was less than joyful, because his comments on her were a little shorter than those on her sisters. Fortunately Vesperus had taken precautions. Fearing she might see the entry, he had added another circle to the two she already had, raising her from a magna to a summa. As a result, although her evaluation was less detailed than the others', Cloud was at least in the same class, and she was not too disappointed.

But when the sisters turned the page and found a Black Belle whose evaluation was every bit as high as Lucky Pearl's and Lucky Jade's and rather higher than Cloud's, they were astonished.

"Where does this beauty come from? What makes her so gorgeous?"

"She's the one who came to the temple with you," said Vesperus. "You remember."

Lucky Pearl burst into laughter. "You mean that old baggage! At her age and with her looks, it's sheer blind luck that she got a summa, too!"

"If that's the case," said Cloud, "our rankings are more of an insult than an honor, and who wants that kind of evaluation? Why don't we just cross them out?"

"There's no need to get upset," said Lucky Jade. "There must be a motive behind his method of selection. He must have heard the story of the old pupil who repaid his examiner's kindness over three generations, [81] so he examined only three candidates and gave us all summas without regard to what we wrote, in the hope that we'd repay the favor someday. That would account for you three, all right, but I am by far the youngest and ought to get the lowest class. How is it I have a summa, too? Kindly remove my name."

Vesperus wanted to make a clean breast of everything and persuade them that one person's luck rubs off on everyone present, but his three pupils were raising such a commotion that the examiner could not get a word in edgewise.

"Sister Jade, you are absolutely right," said Lucky Pearl, "but although you are the youngest, we're not exactly old, either. I say we remove all of our names and let the old pupil be the sole winner." She picked up the brush, crossed out their names and evaluations, and appended a note of her own:

Huaiyin was youthful, Jiang and Guan venerable. [82] The former would not presume to be ranked with the latter and must respectfully yield.

Then she turned to Vesperus. "Fortunately this brilliant prospect lives not far from here. You'll find her through that door over there. Do go and give her some cultivation. From now on we three won't be troubling you for any."

Confronted with this display of public indignation, Vesperus could do nothing more than hang his head meekly, acknowledging his bias. Let them drive him out if they wished, he would not say a word.

He waited until they had calmed down a little before trying to win them over with a confession. "In the first place, it was a natural extension of my love for you. Secondly, I wanted to find her and get her to introduce us, so that I could make love to you. That's how I overcame my scruples enough to write those flattering words; it was not an honest evaluation, by any means. I hope you ladies won't judge me too harshly."

At these words the women's indignation began to evaporate, and Vesperus took the opportunity to ingratiate himself further. Undressing first, he lay on the bed waiting for them to join him. They were about to do so, when all of a sudden the maid on guard duty gave an emphatic cough. Recognizing the secret signal, the women began pulling on their clothes again with lightning speed. As soon as they had dressed, Lucky Pearl and Lucky Jade rushed out to receive their visitor, leaving Cloud behind to hide Vesperus. Because he had undressed before the others, his clothes lay underneath theirs. At first he couldn't find them and then, by the time the women had dressed, it was too late for him to dress anyway. There was nothing for it but to climb into the trunk stark naked.

Let us tell now of Flora as she arrived in the main room to be greeted by Lucky Pearl and Lucky Jade. She noticed at once that they looked flustered and that they stood side by side as if barring her way into the bedroom, a fact that only added fuel to her suspicions. Concluding that they had been up to no good, she insisted on storming in to see for herself. But one person's guile is no match for two people's craft, and by the time she reached the bedroom, the live erotic album had been safely locked inside the picture trunk.

In the bedroom Flora made a point of praising her niece. "I've not been in here in quite some time. You've got the place looking nicer than ever." She went first to the head of the bed, then to its foot, and even inspected the cupboards, but she found no telltale signs anywhere and concluded that she must have been unduly suspicious and imagined things. She took a seat and began chatting.

By their quick action the nieces had reduced a potential disaster to a harmless incident, which was fortunate indeed. Little did they realize, however, that in their haste they had overlooked something, and that, one way or another, their secret would soon be out. Flustered by the maid's cough, they had had time only to get dressed and open the trunk. Since their overriding concern had been to stuff their prize inside the trunk, they had neglected a pocket-sized notebook lying on the desk. Only later, while chatting with their aunt, did one of them notice it. She was just reaching for it when Flora, with her sharp eyes, noticed it, too, and snatched it up first. Panic-stricken, the girls tried unsuccessfully to wrest it from her. Then Cloud, realizing they would never get it by force, let it go and affected indifference: "Oh well, it's only a tattered old book we found in the street anyway. Why not let Aunt have it? There's no sense in trying to get it away from her."

"Cloud is really so-o-o generous," said Flora. "A book the size of your hand-it can't be worth very much. So why do we need we to have this tug-of-war over it? Since Cloud has given it to me, let me open it up and see what kind of book it is."

Standing a full ten feet from her nieces, she opened the notebook. From its title, Garner the Beauties of Spring from Far and Wide, she assumed it was an erotic album and hastily leafed through it to enjoy the pictures first. To her surprise it contained not a single erotic picture, only a few columns of tiny characters, which she was forced to read. She had read several pages before she realized that the notebook was more interesting than any erotic album; it consisted of evaluations of beautiful women done by some amorous young man of talent. After carefully savoring the evaluations, she came in the end to one of a Black Belle, whose comment read exactly like a pen-portrait of herself, at which point she felt a certain titillation.

Could this have been written by that young man we met at the temple? she wondered. Turning back to the previous page, she saw a note before the names in the last entry that spoke of meeting three peerless beauties on a certain date. After puzzling for some time over the names Pale Rose Maid and Lotus Pink Beauty, Flora gave a sly smile and concluded that the young man was indeed the author. But when she came to the note

Huaiyin was youthful, Jiang and Guan venerable. The former would not presume to be ranked with the latter and must respectfully yield,