Four girls tripped down the bridge, chattering and laughing as they came, and the gardeners took up basket and broom and moved away.
Hearing the singer (he had left the garden now), the girls rushed with one accord, and climbed and clambered up until they could peer at him over the wall. One poised like a fat balloon-shaped butterfly on the high edge of a great flower-pot, two jostled together tip-toe on a majolica bench, and one (the smallest footed of the lot) climbed squirrel-nimble up a tulip tree. They pelted him with flowers, tearing blossoms ruthlessly from shrub and vase and vine and tree, and each commanded him shrilly to sing to her her favorite song.
"Chong-chong er-ti" (professional singer), "sing on," one cried; "Yao won chong" (let us play with him), another; and the girl in the tree tore the jasmine from her hair and tossed it into his hands.
He leaned against the wall and sang:
"Over green fields and meadows Tiny Rill ran
(The little precocious coquette!);
She was pretty, she knew, and thus early began
Gayly flirting with all that she met.
Her favors on both sides she'd gracefully shower;
One moment she'd kiss the sweet lips of a flower,
The next lave the root of a tree;"
and as he sang, Nang Ping, with Low Soong, her cousin, in her wake, came slowly from the house, and stood listening too, one finger on her lips, her eyes far on the fading hills.
They did not see their mistress—they were her play-*girls in attendance on rich Wu's child—until the man had done and gone. But when they did they rushed to her, laughing and pelting her with speech. "Nang Ping! Nang Ping! Come, play with us! Come, play!"
