公公請糕 Please Take The Cake
行者聞言，急抽身走入裡面，將糕遞與三藏道：「師父放心，且莫隔年焦著。吃了糕，我與你說。」長老接糕在手，向本宅老者道：「公公請糕。」老者道：「我家的茶飯未奉，敢吃你糕？」行者闻言，急抽身走入里面，将糕递与三藏道：「师父放心，且莫隔年焦着。吃了糕，我与你说。」长老接糕在手，向本宅老者道：「公公请糕。」老者道：「我家的茶饭未奉，敢吃你糕？」
逐句解 Line by line
Hearing this, Pilgrim turned away at once and went inside. Handing the cake to Tripitaka, he said, 'Master, set your mind at rest — don't go catching next year's panic today. Eat the cake, and I'll tell you.'
焦著 is a lexical unit, and 著 takes the resultative zháo: to catch, to succumb to. It belongs with 著急 and 著慌, where the same graph in the same reading marks an emotional state taking hold of a person. 焦 here is not 'scorched' but 'burning with anxiety' — the reading the chapter itself confirms, since its only other 焦 is 心焦 at the woodcutter's 休得心焦, 'no need to fret'. 隔年 'a year off, far ahead': the whole phrase is 'do not let next year's panic catch hold of you now'. Read as durative zhe it would mean only fretting while doing something else, which loses the vernacular punch of catching a bad case of worry. 將 is the disposal marker jiāng.
The Elder took the cake in his hand and said to the old man of the house, 'Sir, please take some cake.'
長老 zhǎnglǎo again for Tripitaka. 本宅老者 'the old man of this household' marks him as host. The cake, bought with a counterfeit coin, is now circulating as a courtesy.
The old man said, 'My own tea and rice have not yet been served — how should I dare eat your cake?'
The refusal is obligatory rather than sincere: a host who has not yet fed his guests cannot accept food from them. 敢 here is rhetorical, 'how should I dare', not a question about permission.
Pilgrim goes straight indoors with the cake, and his first act is to tell his master not to catch next year's panic today. 焦著 is vernacular and vivid — anxiety as something that takes hold of a person, the way 著急 and 著慌 use the same graph — and the needling is affectionate and habitual. He made the same complaint about three things in the morning and two at dusk a few passages earlier. It also does something practical: it stops Tripitaka from asking questions before Pilgrim has finished gathering answers.
The cake then becomes a courtesy. Tripitaka offers it to the old man; the old man refuses on the grounds that his own tea and rice have not yet been served. Both moves are obligatory and both know it. A guest cannot eat before he has been fed, and a host cannot accept food from a guest he has not yet fed.
There is a quiet joke underneath the etiquette that the novel does not point out. The object being passed round with such ceremony was bought a minute ago with a coin that is actually a monkey's hair. Elaborate courtesy is being performed over a fraudulent purchase, and nobody in the room is in a position to notice. Tripitaka, meanwhile, has been told not to panic and given something to eat, which is the whole of the management his disciple thinks he requires.