Chapter 47 — Calculations (Bonus update for 150 pink votes)

Dou Bingheng said with a smile, "The moment word reached me that Ruifu meant to give Shouyuan half the West Dou estate as her dowry, I understood his intent. I sent men to Ganquan County at once—I feared a long night would breed many dreams. Third Uncle might well repent at the very moment of handing over the property."

"You have thought it through most thoroughly." Gazing at her son—so mild and refined in manner, yet so confident and soaring in spirit—the Second Old Madam could not refrain from praising him again and again.

Dou Duo's repentance came faster than Dou Bingheng had anticipated.

Back home, he snatched up the brush-washer from his desk and hurled it at Dou Huaiying.

Dou Huaiying neither dodged nor flinched. When his father's temper had spent itself, he said quietly, "Tomorrow I will return to the capital with Fifth Brother..."

"Have you not disgraced us enough for one day?" Dou Duo cut him off furiously.

"I still mean to sit the spring examinations next year," Dou Huaiying said. "I want Fifth Brother to introduce me to an old Academician who can lecture me on the craft of examination prose."

Dou Duo's anger choked off at once. Then he said, "Very well. When you return from the spring examinations, we will perform the ceremony to install her as principal wife. It will do to let that Wang woman cool her heels a while."

Why must it come to this?

Dou Huaiying wanted to plead with his father a little, but he thought of his father's resentment, and of how he could not possibly forgo the spring examinations, and the words died on his lips.

Dou Duo, however, drew his son into a discussion of examination prose.

Father and son asked and answered, and talked on until the sky began to pale to the color of a fish's belly.

Dou Huaiying rubbed his red-rimmed eyes, went back to wash and change, then returned to the Crane Longevity Hall to take breakfast with his father. When Gao Xing came to report that the trunks and cases had been loaded onto the cart, Dou Duo saw his son to the main gate.

Father and son were still speaking when a great crowd came surging toward them, beating gongs and drums.

Dou Duo frowned. He had just called out "Du An" when from the crowd opposite came a man's shrill, wailing cry: "Old Master Dou of the Dou family, it was all my younger brother's folly—he gave offense to you. The three of us brothers have come to bare our backs to the brambles and beg your pardon. We ask that you, in your great magnanimity, overlook it and forgive us."

The Dou family were greatly startled and all turned as one to look at the crowd.

In the midst of the press walked three men in lilac silk trousers, stripped to the waist, carrying bramble switches on their backs.

Were these not the three Pang brothers?

Du An's jaw dropped in astonishment.

Dou Duo, however, was so furious that the veins at his temples throbbed. He demanded sharply of those beside him, "What have they come for?"

"I... I do not know," the servant said. "I will go and ask." But before he could reach the three Pang brothers, they had already thrown themselves down with a thunderous "thud" in the middle of the street.

"Master Dou, we kowtow to you!" And with that they began knocking their heads on the ground—thump, thump, thump—until their foreheads were soon a mass of purple bruises.

"What is going on?"

"Who are these three?"

Someone recognized the third Pang brother, Pang Xilou: "Is that not Master Pang the Third from Lingshou County next door? He is a notorious rogue in Lingshou—who would have thought he would come to this? What has the Pang family done to offend the Dou family?"

The neighbors gathered to watch chattered and speculated, while members of the Pang household kept explaining to all and sundry: "Our Master the Third had eyes but could not see the gold inlaid in jade—he gave offense to Old Master Dou, and has come to make amends."

"Serves him right!" A voice of vindication spat from the crowd. "Even Pang the Bully has his day of reckoning!"

"The Pang family's Old Master ought to deal with him severely."

"Pang the Bully must have tried to extort Old Master Dou himself!"

There was no end to what people said.

Dou Duo's hands trembled with rage.

Pang Yulou's second brother, Pang Yinlou, could not help feeling a little smug. He lowered his voice to his eldest brother Pang Jinlou and his younger brother Pang Xilou: "What did I tell you? It was right to listen to me! If our little brother had gone himself to make trouble for the Zhu family that day, how would we get out of this fix today? In these family quarrels and wrangles, the worst thing is to beat a man to death with one blow and leave him no room. Next time you meet a case like this, you must keep your wits about you!"

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