原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
快辦齋來 Quick Get The Meal On
妹妹們。不可怠慢，快辦齋來。」妹妹们。不可怠慢，快办斋来。」
逐句解 Line by line
妹妹們。
妹妹们。
"Sisters."
妹妹 takes a light second syllable, mèi mei — the pattern for doubled kinship words, the same one that gives 爺爺 and 哥哥 their softened endings. The pattern is narrow: a survey of three earlier chapters of this edition turned up a hundred and nine doubled words and only four that reduce this way, every one of them a word for a relative.
不可怠慢，快辦齋來。」
不可怠慢，快办斋来。」
"Do not be slack about it. Get the meal on, quickly."
怠慢 is the word a host uses for failing a guest, and refusing to be 怠慢 is the standard courtesy. It is also, read a second time, an instruction to hurry up with something that has a schedule.
Eleven characters, and the tone changes completely. Up to here the women have been hosts. Here one of them turns and gives orders, and the room reorganises itself.
The word for slackness is the tell. In a household it means keeping a guest waiting, which is what it means on the surface here. But it is being used to hurry along a preparation that the guest is the subject of, and the courtesy and the instruction are the same sentence.