"
It seemed to him that two knives were piercing his heart. He burst out
into sobbing. But the nurse was already taking out his hair-pins and
clothing him as a man. In a state of stupor he let himself be hurried
to the main door and through the streets. A few moments later he was
back at his parents' house.
His father did not fail to say to him:
"I told you to play the girl, not the man. Why have you committed acts
of which Celestial Reason disapproves?"
Yu-lang jostled thus by his father and his mother, no longer knew
where he stood. Meanwhile the nurse objected:
"But what can they say there? Our young Lord has only to keep himself
hidden for a few days, and it will all pass over."
But at Liu's house the nurse, as she went away, had unwittingly locked
the door, and Liu's wife had come to it and was shaking it violently,
stammering with rage and flourishing her stick.
"Thief, whom may Heaven strike dead! O very vile rascal! For what did
you take me? I am going to show you who I am! I will have your life!
If you do not open the door, I shall break it open with a great case."
But naturally no one answered. Prudence tried in vain to stay her
mother, who loaded her with insults; but at last, in her rage, she
succeeded in breaking the lock, and rushed into the room with her
stick uplifted. The cage was empty and the bird had flown.
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