Just as Pilgrim was peering about, all at once he heard the sound of footsteps within the rear door, and out came a woman neither quite old nor quite young, who asked in a coy, lilting voice: "Who is this that barges uninvited into a widow's house?"

The mistress of the house arrives, and the trap opens its mouth. 正然 is right in the middle of; 聽得 takes the light de. 半老不老, half-old and not-old, is a wonderfully unhelpful way of putting an age on a woman, and exactly the point; 嬌聲 is a soft, coaxing voice. 甚麼 is shén me, what or who; 擅入 is that same walking-in-without-leave Tripitaka had just warned against. She has caught them at it inside thirty seconds.

Flustered, the Great Sage bowed with a rapid murmur of assent and said: "This humble monk comes from the Great Tang in the Land of the East, sent by imperial decree toward the Western Region to worship the Buddha and seek the scriptures."

The Great Sage, who has fought armies of heaven, is flustered by one woman at a door. 慌得 takes the light de, so-flustered-that. 喏喏連聲 is a rapid string of deferential yesses, the noise of somebody bowing fast; 小僧, this humble cleric, is the polite self-diminishing first person for a monk; 奉旨 is under imperial orders. 佛 is fó.

"Our party of four, passing through your precious district as the sky grows dark, has hastened expressly to your reverend and charitable dwelling to beg one night's shelter."

一行四眾, a travelling party of four — and 一行 is read yì xíng, one company on the road, not háng. 寶方, your precious district, and 老菩薩, aged bodhisattva, are flattery of the standard kind aimed at a householder; 檀府 is your almsgiving house, the 檀 coming from Sanskrit dāna, giving.

The woman, greeting him with a smiling word, said: "Elder — and where are the other three?"

笑語相迎, greeting him with smiling speech, takes 相 as xiāng, back and forth between two people. In 長老 the 長 is zhǎng. In 那三位, those three, the 那 points; in the 那裡 that follows it asks. She has gone from challenge to welcome in a single line, and she is counting heads.

"Do bring them in."

請來, do have them come. Two words, and the door is open.

Pilgrim called out loudly, "Master — do come in, now!"

耶 is a hailing flourish on the end of a sentence, the written equivalent of raising your voice across a courtyard.

Only then did Tripitaka, with Bajie and Sha Monk, lead the horse and shoulder the load and go in; and there was the woman coming out of the hall to receive them.

牽馬挑擔, leading the horse and shouldering the pole-load, with 擔 the noun dàn. 出廳迎接, came out of the hall to meet them. Everything about the reception is correct, which ought to worry somebody.

Bajie, with languid, half-lidded eyes, stole a look — and how, you ask, was she got up?

餳眼 is read xíng yǎn — bleary, heavy-lidded eyes, here the sidelong leer of a man sizing someone up. The character is 餳 as xíng, not the táng of malt-sugar. Then 你道他怎生打扮, and how, you ask, was she got up? — the tag that hands the description over to verse. Note whose eyes we are about to borrow.

She wore a jacket of brocade in officer's-green ramie-silk, / over it a vest of pale rose thrown on top;

官綠 is office-green, a specific deep shade; 紵絲襖 is a padded jacket of ramie silk; 比甲 (bǐ jiǎ) is a sleeveless over-vest. 罩著 takes the running 著 (zhe).

She had bound about her a goose-yellow brocade skirt, tricked out with colored knots, / beneath which peeped high-soled embroidered shoes.

結綵 is tied about with coloured silks; 鵝黃 is gosling-yellow; 高底花鞋 are embroidered shoes on a high sole. 下映著 takes the running 著 (zhe), showing beneath.

Her fashionable chignon was veiled in black gauze, / set off against coiling dragon-twists of two-toned hair;

時樣 is in the current fashion — the poem is dating her as precisely as a photograph would. 鬘髻 (mán jì) is a coiled bun; 皂紗 is black gauze. 相襯, setting each other off, takes 相 as xiāng; 襯著 the running 著 (zhe); 盤龍髮 is a coiling-dragon knot of hair.

A palace-style ivory comb glinted vermilion and kingfisher-blue, / and slantwise she had pinned two braided golden hairpins.

宮樣 is palace-fashion; 牙梳 an ivory comb; 朱翠 the pairing of cinnabar red and kingfisher green. 斜簪著, pinned in aslant, takes the running 著 (zhe); 釧金釵 are twisted gold hairpins.

Her cloud-like tresses, half turned gray, swept up like phoenix-wings; / from her ears hung a paired descent of ranked precious pearls.

雲鬢 is cloud-tresses; 半蒼, half grey, is the one honest detail in the whole portrait; 飛鳳翅, soaring phoenix wings, describes how the hair is swept up; 寶珠排 is a row of jewel-pearls.

Though she wore neither rouge nor powder, she was lovely still; / in charm she yet resembled one in the bloom of youth.

The couplet that fixes her exactly. 脂粉不施, wearing neither rouge nor powder, keeps 不 as bù before 施. 猶自 is still, even so. 還似 takes 還 (hái), still, with 似 (sì), resembles; 少年 is shào nián, youth. Grey at the temples and needing no cosmetics, charming as a girl — the poem will not let you settle on matron or seductress, and that instability is the whole engine of what follows.