仙童出迎 The Boy-Adepts Come Forth
及至二層門裡，只見那裡面急急忙忙，走出兩個小童兒來。看他怎生打扮：及至二层门里，只见那里面急急忙忙，走出两个小童儿来。看他怎生打扮：
逐句解 Line by line
Coming to the inner gate, they saw two little boys hurry out in haste from within.
二層門, the second gate — the pilgrims move inward through the standard courtyards of a temple compound. 小童兒 ends in the diminutive er, the little tag that makes a word small and familiar.
See now how they were arrayed:
Another verse cue: "see how they were got up." 怎生打扮, zěn shēng dǎ ban — the formula that introduces a portrait rather than a landscape.
Pure of bone and bright of spirit, faces fair to see; atop, their hair in tufted knots, the short locks tousled free.
骨清神爽, pure of bone and bright of spirit, is physiognomy rather than description: in Daoist thought the quality of the bones shows the quality of the cultivation. 丫髻, yā jì, the twin top-knots a Chinese child's hair is tied into — the visual signature of "boy-acolyte." 鬅, péng, tousled.
Their Daoist robes, as though by nature, wreathed the collar round with mist; their feather-garb, how fittingly, let sleeves stream out on the wind.
羽衣, yǔ yī, "feather-garb," is the standard term for an immortal's robe and the reason Daoist priests are called 羽士, feathered gentlemen — the idea being that an adept who completes the work sprouts plumage and flies. Mist at the collar, wind in the sleeves: the boys are dressed as what they are.
Their girdle-cords bound tight in dragon-head knots; their straw sandals lightly wound with silkworm-mouth floss.
環絛, huán tāo, a ringed girdle-cord; 龍頭結, a dragon-head knot; 芒履, máng lǚ, straw sandals; 蠶口絨, silkworm-floss binding. The portrait works downward from the hair to the feet, as these set-pieces conventionally do.
Their bearing, past the common run — no vulgar sort were these — the very pair, Pure-Wind and Bright-Moon, the two immortal boys.
The verse withholds their names until the last line and then supplies both. 丰采, fēng cǎi, bearing; 非俗輩, no common sort.
Two boys come hurrying out, and the novel stops to dress them properly. The portrait is conventional and it is meant to be: pure bones, bright spirit, hair in a child's twin top-knots, feather-robes with mist at the collar and wind in the sleeves, girdle-cords knotted, straw sandals bound with silk floss. This is the full iconography of the 仙童, the Daoist boy-transcendent, and the 世德堂本 grants them every item of it before either of them speaks.
That matters for what comes later. The verse establishes Pure-Wind and Bright-Moon as genuine adepts, not comic servants — dignified, well-turned-out, twelve hundred years into their cultivation. When the fruit goes missing and they lose their tempers and start screaming abuse at a visiting monk, the drop is from a considerable height. It also makes them harder to laugh at: they are the injured party throughout, and the verse has already asked us to take them seriously.