The following morning at the daily greeting, Changfeng and Molan — the brother and sister pair — had indeed “recovered from their illness.” Wang Shi fussed over them both, asking in turn what their ailment had been and how they were feeling now. Changfeng bore it well enough, but Molan’s face had flushed red with embarrassment. After everyone paid their respects to the Old Madam in proper order, Changfeng and Molan together knelt to beg the Old Madam’s pardon.

“We worried the Old Madam needlessly. In truth, we were not genuinely ill — only the evening before last we caught a slight chill while sleeping, and the next morning rose feeling dizzy and heavy-headed. It was nothing serious, but I thought to myself: the Old Madam has only just recovered — what if I passed my illness to her? And because Elder Brother’s room is close to mine, Lin Yiniang feared the sickness might spread to him as well, and so kept him in too.” Molan said in a gentle, soft voice, her complexion wan, her bearing delicate — she appeared to have truly suffered through an illness. Changfeng’s fair, clear face looked somewhat sheepish, and he added: “I do not know what happened either — that morning Younger Sister fell ill, and I was not allowed out. We have caused Grandmother worry. Please do not hold it against us, Grandmother.”

As he spoke, he bowed again and again. Minglan, watching from the side, could not detect any obvious pretense in the scene either. The Old Madam looked at Changfeng’s somewhat confused expression and her countenance softened slightly; she said warmly: “Feng Ge’er is nearly ten years old now — it is time he had his own room and his own attendants, the better to facilitate his studies. It does no good for him to spend his days among women and children. Your Elder Brother is planning to sit the preliminary examinations next year and is working hard at this very moment — he barely sees even his sisters anymore. Though a family of our standing could purchase an academic degree, it is not as good as earning it through examination. You too must apply yourself diligently. Whether you bring glory to the clan or establish yourself through your own efforts — that is all up to your own destiny.”

These words were meant not only for Changfeng’s ears, but for Lin Yiniang’s as well. They were spoken from the heart. Changfeng immediately straightened and stood at respectful attention, bowing deeply to the Old Madam with clasped hands. On the other side, Wang Shi lit up with pride at the mention of Changbai, her joy impossible to conceal. Changbai, as always, was a man of few words — he did not even raise an eyebrow.

The Old Madam drew Changfeng close and spoke with him a while longer, but throughout paid no attention whatsoever to Molan. The girl’s face slowly grew flushed with embarrassment, and she stood there not knowing what to do with herself. Only then did the Old Madam look at her and say, slowly: “Mo Jie’er’s chill this time was likely the result of the cold she caught while attending on me the other day. The weather is freezing, and your constitution is delicate, so of course you could not withstand it.”

Molan answered with a soft cry, tilting her face to the side, her eyes brimming with tears — looking both pitiful and aggrieved. She said: “Not being able to serve at the Old Madam’s side — that is my misfortune. These past few days, the distress in my heart is what caused me to catch this chill. It is all this granddaughter’s fault. This granddaughter thought wrongly. I ask the Old Madam to reprimand me.” As she spoke, she knelt before the brick bed, her small frame swaying and trembling; even the maids and nannies in the room looked on with reluctant sympathy.

The Old Madam watched her for a moment, then had Cuiping help her up and drew her near, saying gently: “Mo Jie’er, I did not invite you here — there is no need to take it to heart. It is only that I have many grandchildren and many matters to attend to, and I asked to look after one of them to lighten the load. You are a young girl — you must not burden your heart too heavily, lest it harm your health. There is still much to come: needlework and embroidery, rules and propriety — you will have your share of hardship. Even your Sixth Younger Sister, I say the same to her.”

The teardrops in Molan’s eyes swirled in their sockets but did not fall. She nodded and leaned against the Old Madam. Seeing this, Hualan came over and offered quiet words of comfort. Wang Shi turned to glance at Rulan and could not help but sigh — Rulan was impatiently tapping the tip of her shoe, her eyes fixed longingly on the door outside. She turned to look at Minglan and found her standing there blankly, staring down at her own feet — and concluded that her own daughter was not so bad after all.

After everyone had departed, the grandmother and granddaughter had their breakfast as usual. Today’s breakfast included a new addition — a meat porridge made with fresh venison and glutinous rice. Minglan had never tasted this kind of meat before and found it exceptionally fragrant; she could not help but eat an extra bowl. Watching the little girl eat with her cheeks puffed out, the Old Madam was moved to eat a little more as well, to Nanny Fang’s delight as she watched from the side. Minglan reflected that eating was a matter of atmosphere — faced with a sickly Lin Daiyu-type who could only pick at her rice grain by grain, even the Pig Immortal himself would lose his appetite.

After the meal, the Old Madam again called Minglan to remove her shoes and come up onto the brick bed. This time she gave her a red-tracing copybook, had her lie over the bed table to practice tracing characters, and introduced each character one by one as she traced. Before long, the Old Madam discovered that Minglan had an excellent memory — she could memorize more than ten characters in a single morning. Though her strokes were mostly crooked and unsteady due to her small and weak frame, each stroke was made with method: when drawing a horizontal line, she would naturally tilt slightly to the left first, then steadily sweep rightward.

This discovery brought out the teaching instinct in the Old Madam. Afraid that keeping a child occupied with writing all day long would grow tedious, she also produced a poetry anthology, selected a few short poems with pleasing cadences, and recited them for Minglan line by line, explaining the meaning of each character as she went. The very first was the famous “Ode to the Goose.” As she recited, she explained. Minglan felt slightly embarrassed but went along with it dutifully, pretending to follow. After two run-throughs she could “recite” it from memory. The Old Madam was increasingly delighted; she pulled the little girl close and kissed her. In her youth, the Old Madam had been quite celebrated for her literary talent — which was precisely why she had taken Lin Yiniang under her wing in the first place. Minglan was hugged until her hair was in disarray, and praised until her heart was pounding. But surely it was perfectly normal for a six-year-old to memorize a poem — after all, the Tang poet Luo Binwang had written verse at age seven.

“Ming Jie’er, do you understand what the poem means?” The Old Madam’s wrinkles seemed to smooth out entirely.

“Once Grandmother explained the characters, this granddaughter understood. …Once there was a goose — it bent its neck toward the sky and sang. Its white feathers floated upon green water, and its red feet stirred the clear water as it paddled.” Minglan recited in a clear, bright voice.

“Do you like this poem?” the Old Madam asked, smiling radiantly.

“I like it very much. This poem has both colors and sounds in it — even someone who had never seen a goose would feel as though they could see that great white goose before them.” Minglan tried her best to phrase her answer in the language of a small child.

The Old Madam pointed at Minglan and laughed: “Well said, well said — ‘a goose’… indeed! That silly goose!”

After two days spent together, the Old Madam had come to feel that this little granddaughter who could not quite get words out properly was in fact a most delightful character. She was not as articulate as Hualan, nor as knowingly charming as Molan — she looked rather slow and blank-faced; yet she possessed a quality that defied description. Whatever she said, heard on the surface, was perfectly sensible and perfectly earnest — her little face grave and solemn — yet it always left the listener with a suppressed urge to burst out laughing.

After a morning of both mental and physical exertion, the Old Madam opened her appetite at midday and ate an extra bowl of rice in good humor. Minglan, to show her new employer the sincere intention to put on weight, also struggled through an entire bowl. The dish of glistening, tender ice-sugar red-braised venison, being so appetizing in appearance, was polished off jointly by the grandmother and granddaughter together. Nanny Fang looked on dumbfounded and quietly instructed Cuiping to prepare a double portion of the digestive tea made with dried tangerine peel, pickled sour plums, and medicinal starter.

After lunch, the two of them settled into a pair of wide black ebony armchairs carved with auspicious longevity patterns by the window to rest and let their food digest before napping. By now winter was drawing toward its end; the ice was thawing and the snow melting, and the noontime sun cast a warmly drowsy light. Minglan soaked up the warmth like a fluffy little cat curled on the brocade-cushioned chair. Having eaten so much at midday, her small cheeks were a rosy, tender red. The Old Madam watched her granddaughter’s eyes slowly drooping shut, and suddenly asked: “…Ming Jie’er, do you think your Fourth Sister was truly ill?”

The question was a curious one.

Minglan had been on the verge of dozing off; hearing this, she made an effort to open her eyes wider, looking somewhat muddled as she spoke in a jumbled way: “I… I do not know. At first I thought Fourth Sister was angry and ashamed, and was pretending to be ill rather than come — whenever the Master comes to check on Fifth Sister’s schoolwork, she pretends to be ill. But then this morning when I saw Fourth Sister, I thought she really had been ill after all.”

The Old Madam, upon hearing this blunt honesty, smiled faintly, then met the pair of bright, clear eyes and patted the scattered strands of hair on her head, touching the small round bun on top. She said: “What if your Fourth Sister was genuinely pretending? Should she not be punished?”

Minglan leaned against her grandmother’s warm hand, shook her head, and stretched out her pair of pale little paws to clutch the Old Madam’s sleeve; she said softly: “She cannot be punished. If she could not come to the Old Madam’s side, Fourth Sister’s heart would hurt even if her body was fine. There must have been something amiss — it was not quite a pretense. When Elder Sister used to make me play shuttlecock every day, I once genuinely feigned illness myself.”

Minglan actually had quite a bit of sympathy for Molan. It could be guessed that back when Lin Yiniang was in favor, Molan often threw tantrums in the same way — so when Molan was refused, Lin Yiniang reflexively gave the Old Madam a piece of her mind. Unfortunately, this time she had walked straight into a trap.

One had to understand: since Sheng Hong’s promotion and transfer to Dengzhou, he had firmly resolved to put his household in order. He did genuinely favor Lin Yiniang and her children and was willing to elevate them — but he held his family’s standing and social position in even higher esteem. The Old Madam had barely finished refusing Molan when Lin Yiniang had both her children feign illness and skip the morning greeting — this was openly defying the Old Madam, a bald-faced declaration to the whole of Sheng Mansion that Lin Yiniang’s backbone was as stiff as ever. The Old Madam’s swift counter-move was to force Sheng Hong to choose between his affection for Lin Yiniang and the dignity of the household. With the virtue of filial piety at the forefront, Sheng Hong chose the latter without hesitation. It was rather like investing in stocks — you could not look only at a company’s performance; you had to keep an eye on the national climate as well. The current climate of Sheng Mansion was this: Sheng Hong was willing to protect Lin Yiniang, but Lin Yiniang must strictly observe the conduct proper to a concubine.

The Old Madam felt that this little granddaughter saw things with great clarity, and was mildly surprised. She asked in the same gentle tone: “Then where does Ming Jie’er think your Fourth Sister’s error lies?”

Minglan tilted her small head with a very serious air and said: “Whom to invite to the Old Madam’s side — that is a matter of our own filial devotion and the Old Madam’s own willingness. Fourth Sister ought not to have pretended illness just because she did not get her wish, causing you to worry over her.”

The Old Madam smiled with satisfaction and lifted Minglan onto her lap, stroking her little face: “My Sixth Jie’er — you have spoken well. You must know that in my presence, learning characters and needlework are of secondary importance. The first and most essential thing is clear reasoning and sound understanding. Living in this world, one will encounter both what goes one’s way and what does not. What is meant for you is meant for you; what is not, you must not grasp for by force. One must cherish one’s blessings and accept fate — one cannot pursue one’s ends by any means necessary…”

The Old Madam, seeing that the little granddaughter’s face was quite blank, with an expression of half-understanding, felt that she herself had grown rather too profound, and said no more. She called Nanny Cui to carry Minglan into the Pear Blossom Chamber for her afternoon nap.

In truth, Minglan understood it all perfectly well. The Old Madam was quite a pitiable figure. She had once taken Lin Yiniang under her wing hoping to cultivate a refined and lofty Lin Daiyu — and instead had raised a ferocious version of You Erjie, scheming and combative, who had turned Sheng Mansion upside down. The root cause of it all was one word: greed. This time, what the Old Madam was raising was a concubine-born daughter. If the girl were to grow arrogant from being in her presence and develop expectations she ought not to have, it would only end up harming her — and so the Old Madam was preparing in advance.

Lying on the warm brick bed, Minglan let out a small sigh. The truth was, the Old Madam need not worry. From the day she had accepted this identity, she had been thinking about her own future. This was clearly a normal ancient world — with rigid hierarchies, explicit feudal rules, and not the slightest room for wish-fulfilling fantasies. She could not run away from home and become a chivalric heroine, she could not entertain the far-fetched notion of starting a business, and she would not even dare dream of going to live in the palace. The only thing she could do was manage her own life well.

Human happiness is derived from comparison. If everyone around you is worse off than you, even a diet of husks and rough grain will seem quite pleasant. The reason concubine-born daughters suffered was because the legitimate sisters they grew up alongside tended to have far better lives — watching sisters born of the same father but living in incomparably superior circumstances, the heart inevitably ached.

But what if she simply did not compare herself to the legitimate daughters? Minglan imagined herself born into a peasant family that could barely afford enough to eat — or worse still, born into a servant family with no say over her own fate. Compared to those, her current situation was already much better. Her present life ensured at minimum that she was clothed and fed, with even a modest amount of personal savings. Her father was not the sort of degenerate like Jia She who married off his daughters carelessly; the family was reasonably well-off.

For a girl like her in the ancient world, her life’s trajectory had already been mapped out — to be raised by the standards of a concubine-born daughter, to marry a husband of comparable station, to give birth, and to grow old. Aside from the impossibility of divorce and the very likely prospect of having to accept several “little sisters” sharing her husband, it was not so different from modern life. Sometimes, Minglan would think — in a rather unambitious way — that this was not so bad.

If life proved unkind, if the heavens insisted on assigning her a miserable existence — well, then it would come down to one life and one head. If there was truly no other way, she would not be polite about it. If she could not live well, she would not let those who wronged her live well either. When the time came — a white knife in, a red knife out — better to perish together than to yield. Who was afraid of whom? She was someone who had been buried alive under a mudslide!

Thinking on this, Minglan felt a clarity spread through her heart. She stretched out her small belly contentedly and sank into a deep sleep.