那陣風兒 What Wind Blew You Here
須臾間敘及寒溫，「牛王」道：「夫人久闊。」羅剎道：「大王萬福。」又云：「大王寵幸新婚，拋撇奴家，今日是那陣風兒吹你來的？』大聖笑道：「非敢拋撇，只因玉面公主招後，家事繁冗，朋友多顧，是以稽留在外，卻也又治得一個家當了。」须臾间叙及寒温，「牛王」道：「夫人久阔。」罗刹道：「大王万福。」又云：「大王宠幸新婚，抛撇奴家，今日是那阵风儿吹你来的？』大圣笑道：「非敢抛撇，只因玉面公主招后，家事繁冗，朋友多顾，是以稽留在外，却也又治得一个家当了。」
逐句解 Line by line
In a moment they had exchanged the courtesies of cold and warm, and the "Bull King" said, "Madam, it is long since we met."
間 is jiān. And here the source does something it does nowhere else in the chapter: it puts 牛王 in quotation marks, marking the speaker as a Bull King only by report. It is the typographical equivalent of a raised eyebrow. 久闊 is the formal greeting after a long separation.
The Rākṣasī said, "A thousand blessings on my lord."
萬福 — ten thousand blessings — is the set salutation a wife offers her husband, and it comes with a bow attached.
And she added, "My lord has been doting on his new marriage and has cast off this humble person. What gust of wind has blown you here today?"
兒 in 風兒 is the genuine swallowed suffix er, which merges into the syllable in front of it, not the full ér. 奴家 is the self-deprecating form a woman uses of herself — roughly "this servant of yours." And this speech is the second of the chapter's two places where an opening quotation mark of one kind is closed by the matching mark of another; both fall at a question mark before an attribution, and both are kept as the 世德堂本 prints them.
The Great Sage said with a laugh, "I would not dare cast you off. It is only that since the Jade-Faced Princess took me in, household affairs have been many and friends have called often, so that I was detained abroad — and I have set up a second establishment besides."
當 is dàng in 家當, household property — the chapter's only dàng, against the positional dāng of 當被 and 當時 earlier. 得 is dé, attainment. 一 takes yí before the falling tone of 個.
The reunion is a comedy of exact manners. Both parties observe every form — the greeting after long absence, the wifely salutation, the courtesies of cold and warm — and both are lying. She is welcoming a husband who abandoned her; he is a monkey wearing that husband's face; and the only true statement in the whole exchange is her complaint that he has been doting on a new marriage.
The Great Sage's answer is a small masterpiece of the wrong kind of tact. Asked what wind blew him here, he denies having cast her off, blames business and visitors for his absence, and then volunteers that he has set up another establishment besides. He is improvising a husband's excuses without having thought for a moment about what a husband would actually want to conceal.
The quotation marks the source puts round 牛王 at the head of the passage do something the narration never says out loud. Everywhere else in the chapter the name stands bare; here alone it is set off, marking the speaker as a Bull King by report only. For the length of one word the typography takes our side against the Rākṣasī.