When the old couple heard their names, and the words about taking refuge in the Śramaṇa, they steadied themselves and got over their fright, and gave the order: “Ask them in, ask them in.”

公婆 keeps 婆 at the full pó; the softened everyday reading belongs to the doubled 婆婆 and not to the character on its own. 皈正 is to turn and take refuge, and 教 is jiào, to make somebody do a thing. What calms them down is not anything they have seen. It is a list of religious credentials.

The elder went out to call them, and gave them a further charge: “Just now this old gentleman took a great dislike to you. When you go in to meet him now, on no account be defiant — each of you be respectable.”

甚惡你等 puts 惡 in its verbal use, wù, to dislike — not è, wicked, which is how the same character reads seven other times in this chapter. 相見 is the mutual xiāng. 抗禮 is to meet somebody as an equal, and so to withhold deference. 重 is zhòng, weighty, in 尊重.

Bajie said, “I am handsome, I am refined — not like elder brother, who plays the ruffian.”

撒潑 is to carry on outrageously. Bajie's claim to be 俊秀 and 斯文 — handsome and refined — is made by a pig with a snout and fan ears, and nobody contradicts the second half of it.

Pilgrim laughed and said, “But for the long snout, the big ears and the ugly face, he would be quite a fine fellow.”

不是 is conditional here — were it not for — rather than a flat negation. 好男子 keeps 好 at hǎo, good, against the hào of being fond of something that the same character takes in the next passage.

Sha Monk said, “Stop wrangling. This is no place for showing off and playing clever. Go in, go in.”

抓乖弄俏 — snatching at cleverness and playing the pretty fellow — is a four-character idiom for showing off. 之處 is a location, so chù. Sha Monk's function in this chapter is to end arguments, and he does it in nine words.

So they brought the baggage and the horse up to the thatched hall, made their bows together, and sat down.

唱喏 is to bow with a spoken salutation, and 喏 keeps rě. 行囊 is the travelling pack.

That good-hearted old woman took the small child away with her at once, gave orders for rice to be cooked, and set out a meatless meal, which master and disciples ate.

The 世德堂本 prints 咐吩 with the two characters of 吩咐 the other way round — a spelling variant, encoded as printed and read on the characters actually there. 小兒 has 兒 as part of the word for a person, so ér, while 媽媽兒 is suffixed and takes er: the same character, twice in one sentence, doing two different jobs. 素齋 is the meatless meal proper to monks.