Chapter 45: The Scent of Ink in the Bookstore
Jiao believed this.
The old man and the old lady of the Su family are not cold-hearted people and will not really ignore them.
Just at this point, Jiao Shi really admired Su Shengsheng. "Sheng girl used to be very low-key, but now it seems that she has money at her fingertips. After paying the fines for her daughters' families, each family bought a house. The remaining twenty-five taels, the grandsons in the family are all of marriageable age. If she buys a house alone, there will be no money left."
Her shop expenses of seventy taels were carefully calculated.
Thinking that Su Yuanzheng and his eldest daughter-in-law were still squeezed in the side room and that there would be another family before next year, Su Ruilin fell silent.
Jiao Shi looked at his expression and consoled him, "Thankfully, our daughter-in-law is filial and has given us her own money, so we're not left without food. Once we find a good match for Yuan Ling, everything will be fine."
Jiao was not thinking about the five taels of silver in her daughter's hand. It was really a girl's duty to get married when she reached a certain age.
How could Su Ruilin not understand his daughter's character? "Now that our family has fallen into this state, what good marriage can we possibly find? Yuan Ling wouldn't be interested in a bad one."
Having said this, Jiao had to reveal his plan.
"I heard that many successful candidates attend classes at the bookstore run by Miss Sheng. If..."
Su Ruilin interrupted her directly, "How can you let an unmarried girl act as a matchmaker?"
Jiao knew her husband's pedantic nature, so she said, "The Ji and Su families are old friends, so this matter doesn't have to go through Sheng. Master Ji is familiar with those students, so he can help."
"This..." Su Ruilin pondered for a moment.
It's not that he is too embarrassed to ask the younger generation for help, but the Su family has no hope of a career in the future. Which student would be willing to marry the descendant of a criminal?
"Didn't Sheng girl say that? Those successful candidates all admire the old master, that's why they help him in many ways." Jiao naturally knew where his hesitation lay, but in order to prevent her daughter from marrying a peddler, she had to lower her standards.
"Besides, Master Ji often comes to visit the old man, so we should thank him."
Su Ruilin was silent for a long time, but finally nodded in agreement for the sake of his daughter.
Only then did Jiao's brows relax and she continued to mend her clothes.
At the same time, the fourth room was also lighting the lamps and chatting at night.
"It's true, things change over time. This store opened up like it was supposed to. I went to see it, and it was packed with people."
The fourth lady clicked her tongue a few times, looking regretful.
Su Deyong took a sip of the mixed grain wine he had bought and said dissatisfiedly, "One hundred coins per person, and you can eat as much as you want? This is a losing business, it's obviously just for publicity, it won't be prosperous for many days."
The fourth lady's face turned grim. "So much money was poured in all at once, and there wasn't even a sound. It's really heartbreaking."
"What can we do?" Su Deyong was also angry. "The old lady is obviously biased. She would rather throw the money into the water than give it to you. What can you do?"
The Fourth Madam snorted coldly, "The eldest son of the First House is already married, so marrying off a daughter is no big deal. The Second House gave ten taels of silver, but they didn't need to marry off a daughter, so naturally they kept it all. Even if the Third House loses money on their business, they can still marry off two daughters, so the account will be balanced. Only our Fourth House has only one daughter, so we're lucky enough not to have to add to the dowry."
Su Deyong also secretly resented it, "Dad doesn't love us, Mom doesn't give us anything, do you really think we're easy to get rid of?"
"I don't have the face to go there and ask for money now." The Fourth Lady now looked around and saw that even those maids were dressed better than her, and they had lost all their clothes.
"The old lady and the others won't really just sit there and watch these descendants, right? If she is in charge of the marriages in the three courtyards, she can't leave out our branch, right?" But she became uncertain again.
"What's impossible?" Su Deyong's face darkened. "Now that we've fallen out, my stepmother, who already disliked me, now has an even bigger excuse to ignore the fourth branch."
The fourth wife had bought a house and had only a little money left. When she heard this, she couldn't help but panic.
"What should we do then?"
Both of them were used to being lazy and only thought about plundering money from other rooms, and never thought about making money for themselves.
Su Deyong narrowed his eyes, "Where's the fifth girl?"
"What can she do? I saw Su Yuanling bought new clothes these days, and she is asking me for money to make clothes."
Su Deyong put down his wine glass and looked back at her. "Go ahead, make some nice clothes for the fifth girl. They must not be any worse than those for the first wife."
The Fourth Madam naturally knew what kind of person her man was. "Mr. Ji already noticed it last time. It's not good to go there again."
"What are you afraid of?" Su Deyong glared at her with disdain. "Aren't there other students out there?"
He asked the fourth lady to come closer and whisper.
Under the candlelight, the two of them slowly smiled knowingly.
…
The next day, Su Shengsheng took Heng Ge and Ning Jie to the bookstore early in the morning.
After the recent enrollment, Yuebi Bookstore is almost full of students, but the age range is a bit uneven.
Su Shengsheng wants to wait until things stabilize for a period of time before expanding the class.
After all, the teacher configuration is not uniform and needs to be adjusted.
In this day and age, boys have to take charge of the family early and many of them have to help with housework.
She simply let children over ten years old attend classes in the afternoon and children under ten years old attend classes in the morning.
This also makes it easier for students and their parents to make arrangements.
For young children, it is inconvenient for parents to take them with them while they do chores, so they can just leave them here to listen to classes.
Older children can attend classes in the afternoon so that they can do their housework in the morning.
As for the Juren students, she moved the time forward to the hour of Mao so as not to affect their substitute classes.
Mr. Sun’s bookshop still allows them to read and study for free.
As soon as they entered the bookstore, all the students looked at the two new kids.
Now they won't ask any questions that such a young child can learn by following.
Because according to the memorization method taught by Su Shengsheng, even they can memorize the most difficult article every day.
Brother Heng is not old enough to attend private school, but he has been learning from Su Shengsheng.
His eyes sparkled with excitement, but he still listened to his sister like an adult, took Ning Jie to the first row, and then listened to his sister's lecture together.
In fact, Ning Jie is the one Su Shengsheng is most optimistic about.
The memory palace she teaches requires people whose minds are already full of knowledge maps to partition and clear the cache first.
Ning Jie was like a brand new computer. Whatever she taught him would be stored in it, which saved her a lot of effort.
"Today we're talking about emotional memory," Su Shengsheng began her explanation concisely. "Many bad things are still fresh in our memory long after they've happened because we remember the feeling."
Everyone in the hall listened attentively, and no one asked inappropriate questions.
In just half a month, they were like a bag of cotton, constantly absorbing knowledge, fearing that they would fall behind if they were distracted.
“…Imagine myself as the poet of this poem, experiencing what he has endured, facing the doubts of those around him, and remaining steadfast in expressing my thoughts.”
"Or, imagine what era and context this policy proposal came from... If you were the emperor's advisor, what would you do next? How would you respond to challenges?"
Su Shengsheng didn't dare to tell these curious kids, "Imagine if you were the emperor, how should you deal with the issue of national policy?"
But she believed that people with insight would naturally understand what she meant.
If the emperor wants the court to function properly, it is not a simple question of right or wrong; many things must be considered.
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