The old man was still talking with the three monks before his gate when, from the south side of the farm, two young men appeared,

相講 takes 相 as xiāng, the "with each other" reading — talking together. Hold that against 相貌 in the passage just finished, where the same character is xiàng, appearance: two jobs, two readings, a few lines apart. 少年人 takes shào.

bringing with them an old dame and three or four small boys and girls, their skirts hitched up and their feet bare, come back from the setting-out of the rice.

Two four-character phrases: 斂衣赤腳, clothes hitched up and feet bare, and 插秧而回, home from setting out the rice. The novel almost never looks at farm work; when it does, as here, it does so with an exactness that has nothing to do with the plot.

Seeing a white horse and a pole of luggage, and all this clamor at their own doorway,

一擔行李: 擔 is the noun, dàn, "a pole-load." Because a fixspec raises its tone from dān to dàn, the 一 in front of it has to shift too, and is given as yí — the tone of 一 depends on what follows it, so changing the following character changes it as well. This is the only site of its kind so far in the chapter. 喧嘩 takes 嘩 as huá.

and not knowing what to make of it, they crowded forward in a body and demanded, "What are you about?"

是甚來歷 and 做甚麼的 both take the question-word 甚, shén. 一擁上前, to surge forward in a mass.

Bajie turned his head about, waggled his ears a few times, and thrust out his long snout,

長嘴 is cháng zuǐ, the long snout, not zhǎng; the automatic reading goes wrong. 調過頭來 takes diào, "to turn about." Bajie is showing off, and knows exactly what he is doing.

so that the people reeled east and staggered west, tripping and sprawling every way. Sanzang, alarmed, called out with all his mouth, "Don't be afraid, don't be afraid.

嚇得 and 慌得 are matched result constructions, both taking 得 as de. 東倒西歪 — falling east and leaning west — takes 倒 as dǎo, "to fall," and is still the ordinary phrase for a crowd knocked off its feet. 亂蹡亂跌: 蹡, qiāng, to stagger.

We are no bad men. We are monks going to fetch the scriptures."

滿口招呼, "to call out with a full mouth." The Tang Monk, silent all through the quarrel, finds his voice only once the peasants are on the ground.

Only then did the old man come out of the house, and he raised his wife by the arm. "Get up, goodwife. There is little here to be alarmed at.

少要驚恐: 少 is shǎo, "little, scarcely," the vernacular way of saying don't. 攙著 takes zhe.

This master comes from the Court of Tang. It is only that his disciples' faces are somewhat ill-favored; and a hard face may hide a kind heart. Take the children indoors."

面惡人善 — the face bad, the man good — is a proverb, and it says in four characters what Bajie had to argue at length a moment earlier. Squire Wang gets there on his own, and the reader is meant to notice that he is the only person in the chapter who does.

So the old dame took her husband by the arm, and the two young men led the children in.

The character 兒 appears twice here in two readings: in 老兒 it is the suffix, er, and in 兒女 the full noun, ér. A positional fixspec is needed to keep them apart. 領著 takes zhe.