Chapter 1, Chapter 1 "Kate,..."

"Kate, why haven't you boiled the water yet! Is breakfast ready?" Mrs. Price started yelling early in the morning. "That lazy girl, I don't know where she's been. The servants in Portsmouth are really terrible. Oh, John, you and Richard, stop running around in the house and get dressed. You have to go to school today."

The house where the Price family currently lives is three stories, but it is very small. The walls are made of a single layer of eight-inch bricks, so any loud noise can be heard clearly from upstairs to downstairs.

Mary, who was still upstairs in her room, heard her older brother William shout, "Mom, don't worry about John and Richard, I'll take them to school with me." William, who was already dressed, quickly came downstairs and pulled his two younger brothers aside, telling them to get dressed first.

After waiting a while longer, Mrs. Price asked her eldest daughter, Fanny, to urge the water to boil, but it still wasn't ready. Mary and Susan also came downstairs with their two-year-old son, Sam. Seeing that Fanny's urging was in vain, Mary went to the kitchen to help. Kate and another maid, Ava, finally brought out breakfast: oatmeal, fried eggs, bread, milk, coffee, tea, and a small piece of butter, but the bread slices were clearly not toasted yet, and the butter hadn't been spread on the bread.

Mrs. Price muttered a few more words to the servants, at which point Mr. Price emerged from the room, still grumbling, and the family went to the dining room for breakfast. The breakfast was anything but peaceful, as the youngest child in the family—baby Tom—began to cry as everyone ate. Mrs. Price had run out of breast milk for him; she was pregnant again.

"Oh, my little darling, you should have some milk," Mrs. Price said, trying to soothe the children. After the three older boys finished breakfast, they went to a day school, and the house finally quieted down a bit. Fanny also helped Mrs. Price soothe Tom; although she was only nine, she was already able to help with many things around the house.

Mary felt more than once that her mother, Mrs. Price, in this life had a somewhat terrifying aura when it came to childbirth, after all, she had already given birth to eight children, and the one in her belly would be the ninth.

Although sheep appendix condoms existed in England in the 18th century, they were quite expensive, and their use was almost exclusively limited to a select group of discerning and suave young gentlemen in high society. At that time, infant mortality rates were high, and ordinary couples seemed to have no need for contraception; having multiple children was seen as a way to "spread the risk." Mr. Price, having suffered a minor disability in battle, could no longer fight. His job in the Marines was no longer promising, and he spent his days idly, with little entertainment beyond entertaining a couple of old friends with fine wine and food. The couple simply stayed home, constantly having children.

With such frequent pregnancies, five-year-old Mary and her younger sister Susan had already witnessed the birth of two younger brothers, and they were followed by their older sister Fanny and three older brothers. Young Mrs. Price's belly grew larger and smaller with each pregnancy, and she became increasingly haggard, leaving Mary both dumbfounded and terrified.

Marriage, followed by an unlimited number of children, had become Mary's greatest fear at this stage. While wealthy wives could find legitimate ways to prevent pregnancy (in the past, upper-class couples didn't sleep in the same bedroom, which Mary found strange, but now seemed perfectly reasonable), poor wives were practically their husbands' legal slaves. Mrs. Price, once a wealthy young lady, had fallen to this state simply because of an unsuitable marriage—how could Mary not be terrified?

According to the tradition of primogeniture at that time and Mrs. Price's love for William, if Mr. Price passed away, most of her dowry would be left to William, and the others would have to fend for themselves. The boys would have various options, but Fanny, Mary, and Susan would be in a terrible situation. Lacking dowries, they would find it difficult to find suitable marriage partners, and they might end up living a life even worse than Mrs. Price.

Besides the fear of the future, Mary also felt very uncomfortable living with such a large family. In her previous life, she was born in China nearly two hundred years in the future. As an only child, she received unconditional love from her parents and was used to the life of a small family of three. After coming to this world, not to mention her helpless infancy, as she grew up and slowly recalled the events of her previous life, Mary missed modern life more and more.

Because she possessed the soul of an adult, Mary was more intelligent and quick-witted than her twin sister Susan from a young age, and she was also the cutest in the Price family, where everyone was beautiful.

She had thick, silky blonde curls. While Fanny and Susan were also blonde, their hair wasn't as pure a color as hers; it was a golden-brown. As they aged, Fanny's hair became closer to brown, and Susan's hair gradually darkened, but Mary showed no signs of this. In the sunlight, her hair shimmered like gold, a dazzling color that left Mrs. Price in awe. Her eyes were azure, appearing almost green in the changing light, like two jewels carefully set in her beautiful face by the Creator. Her skin was slightly pale due to malnutrition, but clean and smooth, without a single freckle. Her godmother, General Maxwell's wife, had chosen her as her goddaughter because she wanted to have an equally lovely and beautiful child.

But so what? Even if she wasn't this beautiful in her previous life, she was still the apple of her parents' eye. And now, even if she received a little favor from Mrs. Price because of her intelligence and cuteness, Mrs. Price's favorites would always be her precious boys. As for Mr. Price, let alone him, Mary had never seen him express any fatherly love for his three daughters, which made it even more difficult for Mary to regard this couple as her new parents.

The harsh living conditions of the 19th century were incomparable to those of later generations. At this time, England was about to enter the Regency era, and medicine was extremely crude and primitive. Mary once witnessed Mr. Price drinking a medicine of unknown ingredients prescribed by the doctor to treat his fracture (compared to his comrades who died in agony after their legs were amputated, the lieutenant's minor injury was a blessing in disguise). Fortunately, he was in good health and did not suffer any harm from it (Mary later learned that the medicine contained tincture of opium, and thankfully Mr. Price did not become addicted).

In general, the most important thing for survival in this world is to avoid getting sick as much as possible. Once you unfortunately contract an illness, the probability of being killed by doctors is greater than being cured. Whether you survive depends almost entirely on the strength of your own constitution. Unfortunately, Mary and her sister Fanny were among the weakest of their siblings, which was clearly related to their mother's frequent pregnancies. Fortunately, the Price family was middle class. Mrs. Price couldn't afford to buy popular children's medicines (which could calm crying children and also contained a small amount of tincture of opium), nor could she give her children the cheapest tincture of opium like the working class. Mary and her siblings were fortunate enough to grow up healthy.

Mary, judging by modern standards, always felt there was a barrier between herself and her family. But by today's standards, the Price couple weren't such bad parents! The Price couple never felt they needed to care about their children's mental well-being; they had too many children to give them all the attention they needed. As long as the little ones didn't cause trouble or give their parents too much to worry about, Mrs. Price was grateful.

Both parents had their shortcomings, but fortunately, the eldest son, William, who was a little over ten, was relatively reliable. The twins, John and Richard, although seven years old and often considered unpleasant, were willing to obey their older brother and frequently helped with errands like fetching the newspaper and milk. The nine-year-old sister, Fanny, was even more diligent. As the eldest daughter, she not only helped her mother keep her younger siblings from running around, but also had to soothe her two-year-old brother, Sam, and the newborn, Tom, as Mrs. Price's second pregnancy meant she couldn't pay much attention to them anymore. Mary, whose soul was that of an adult, could only appear obedient and sensible in front of her parents, doing what little she could to avoid causing Fanny any more worry.

Despite the various inconveniences of this life, Mary still hopes to live a healthy life. After all, the past cannot be changed; in her previous life, she had died suddenly at work due to overwork. Therefore, Mary, whose constitution is slightly weaker in this life, pays more attention to physical exercise and environmental hygiene, hoping to have a healthy body when she grows up.

Because of this, Mr. Price repeatedly criticized his second daughter, Mary, for being too "spoiled," always complaining that her clothes weren't clean enough, or as the lieutenant put it, "having picked up some of the bad habits of the rich." After all, in an era when clothes were also a form of inherited property, many people didn't wash their clothes for years.

At that time, many clothes were made of natural materials and dyes, making them expensive. Moreover, once washed, they could never regain their original shine. To better protect these garments, some wealthy people never washed their formal wear, having servants to care for them. This reminded Mary of later luxury brands, and she couldn't help but feel that this was also a kind of "traditional practice." Fortunately, Mrs. Price retained her family's custom; some of the Price family's clothes were sent to the laundry, but one couldn't expect the laundry maids to clean them very well. Mary could only be careful when wearing them.

Clothes weren't washed very often, and people generally didn't bathe much, resulting in many people having lice. The Price family was considered relatively clean. However, even though Portsmouth had the longest average daylight hours in England, Mrs. Price didn't approve of Mary bathing frequently, although Mary felt that she often didn't really bathe at all, merely wetting a cloth with hot water and wiping herself down. This method of bathing, which she had only used when she had a fever in her previous life, was now a popular middle-class practice. As for a proper bath or soaking, that was the privilege of the wealthy, requiring "a lot of water and several servants" (Mrs. Price's words).

The Price family now lives in a rented house, a type of townhouse originally designed for the urban middle class. From Mary's perspective, these houses are of extremely poor quality; there are no beams, the walls are shockingly thin, and you can hear every little sound inside. Even with three floors, it feels cramped with such a large family living there (the Price family has twelve people including servants).

The house wasn't exactly clean; there were often stains that hadn't been cleaned, and the dust in the air was clearly visible in the sunlight. The chores were never enough for the maids Kate and Ava alone; Mrs. Price and Fanny had to help. Five-year-old Mary and Susan (who lived with Fanny and Susan) had already started helping clean their own rooms.

From an early 19th-century perspective, this house, while not as comfortable as country villas or the homes of the wealthy, still had a living room, dining room, and bedrooms. Located right next to the street, it wasn't exactly clean, but it wasn't filthy either. The truly filthy houses Mary couldn't see: those poor people lived in houses surrounded by excrement, forced to build narrow paths with bricks for passage, and some even lacked doors for their toilets—if they had, the residents would have burned them as firewood.

Mary was powerless to change their current living conditions; she was just a little girl with only five pence of pocket money, and that wasn't the most pressing issue for the Price family right now.

A note from the author:

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