she gathered up the supper things and took away the table and benches.
Seven Pounds took the broken bowl home and sat upon his doorsill, smoking. But in his worry he forgot to puff at his pipe, and it went out. He knew that the situation was very critical, and he wished to think of some way out, some remedy, but his ideas were vague and disjointed and there was no way to connect them up. "Queue, queue, how about the queue? . . . Eighteen-foot snake spear . . . Each generation worse than the last . . . The Emperor upon his Dragon Throne . . . The broken bowl must be taken to the city to be mended . . . Who can stand up against him? . . . It is clearly written in the book . . . His mother's "
The next morning Seven Pounds poled the boat from Luchen to the city and returned in the evening as usual. At supper he told old Mrs. Nine Pounds that he had had the broken bowl mended in the city. The part broken off was very large and required sixteen brass clasps at three cash each, a total cost of forty-eight cash.
Old Mrs. Nine Pounds was dissatisfied as usual and said, "Each generation worse than the last. I have lived long enough. Three cash a clasp! But what sort of clasps are these? In the old days the clasps were different. I have lived seventy-nine years . . . "
From then on, although Seven Pounds went to the city as usual, a certain gloom hung over his household. The villagers avoided him, no longer caring to come to him for news of the city. Sister Seven Pounds had no civil words for him and frequently called him "jailbird."
One evening about ten days later, Seven Pounds returned from the city to find his wife in good spirits. "Did you hear anything in the city?" she asked him.
