又養了精神 The Strength Kept Up Besides
寡婦道:「好人,好人,又不失了和氣,又養了精神。」教:「擡進轎子來,不要去請。」四眾吃了酒飯,收了家火,都散訖。寡妇道:「好人,好人,又不失了和气,又养了精神。」教:「抬进轿子来,不要去请。」四众吃了酒饭,收了家火,都散讫。
逐句解 Line by line
The widow said: "Good men, good men — no harm done to good feeling, and the strength kept up besides."
和氣 is harmony, good feeling between people, and it is the thing a landlady most wants preserved. 養了精神 is to have nursed one's vigour — and it is a delicate joke, because the strength she means them to save is exactly the strength the girls would have cost them.
She called: "Bring the chair back in. Don't go fetching them."
The order countermands her own from a few lines before. The chair goes out and comes straight back, which is the only thing that actually happens in the whole exchange.
The four of them ate and drank, the things were cleared away, and everyone went off.
散訖 is dispersed and done with, a slightly formal way of closing a scene. Thirteen characters end the longest social episode in the chapter.
She approves of them for declining the girls, which is the last piece of misreading in a whole evening of it. She thinks she has honest, temperate merchants; she has four monks in stolen clothes.
Her joke about saving their strength is the closest the chapter comes to bawdy, and it lands on Tripitaka, who has spent the evening silent at a table where prostitutes were discussed twice as an item of expenditure.