Chapter 469 Borrowing Money
If she had married someone else, she might not be living the life she has today.
When Old Zhou was young, he was lazy and not very caring, but that was not just his problem. Qian saw it very clearly. Which man in the village didn't have these problems?
It was her eldest brother. The water tanks at home were always carried by her sister-in-law in the past, then by her nieces and nieces-in-law, and now by her grandchildren...
The reason why Zhou Jin is being talked about is simply that he is a little lazier than the average person, but he also has his own considerate qualities that others do not have.
Even though women in the village can now manage the household and even keep the money with them, there are not many women who can really make the decisions when large sums of money are needed or when there are major events at home.
Not to mention when the man in charge disagrees with it.
But Qian can.
In Old Zhou's family, Qian seemed to care little about things outside, and left them to Old Zhou to arrange. But it would be fine if she didn't say anything, but once she spoke, the family had to listen to her.
If this happened in someone else's home, the man would have been furious.
But Old Zhou just won’t turn it over.
Perhaps because old grudges were brought up, Old Zhou felt guilty and got up before dawn, waking up earlier than Qian.
He fumbled around in the house for a while, waking up Qian, and finally he opened the door and went out.
Qian opened her eyes, glanced at his back, and closed them again.
Old Zhou squatted in front of Manbao's door.
Manbao stretched lazily with disheveled hair and was about to go out to fetch water for washing. When she opened the door, she saw her father. She was so scared that she almost dropped the wooden basin on her father's head.
"father?"
Old Zhou sighed and carefully glanced at the fourth child's room. Seeing that there was no movement next door, he breathed a sigh of relief. He immediately pulled his daughter into the room and asked, "Manbao, Daddy has a favor to ask of you."
Manbao held the wooden basin and nodded, "Dad, you say."
"You have money, don't you?"
Manbao nodded affirmatively, she was very rich.
Old Zhou heaved a sigh of relief, a bright smile spread across his face, and he whispered, "Dad wants to borrow some money from you. I..."
Old Zhou thought about it and realized that he didn't have much chance of saving money. He became conflicted and said, "How about Dad pay you back in a few years?"
"Dad, don't you have some private money?"
Old Zhou took out the private money he had found early in the morning and showed it to her. It was not much, just a string of money with a dozen or so coins tied together.
He sighed, "Your mother keeps all the money in the house. She knows every penny. I've only saved this one hundred and sixteen pennies in the past few years."
Manbao stared at her father blankly. Even Sitou and Sanya would have more deposits with her than this amount.
Old Zhou asked Manbao, "Do you have much money?"
Manbao nodded, at least it was much more than her father's.
"Well, can you lend me some?"
"Dad, what do you want money for?"
"I want to make a silver bracelet for your mother. It doesn't have to be too big, a thin one will do." He said distressedly, "I looked at it the last time I went to the county town, but the money your mother gave me was not much left after buying the cloth, so I didn't buy it. I originally thought I could buy it for her when she was a little older, but..."
But didn’t the old matter get brought up yesterday?
Although his wife didn't look angry, he couldn't help but feel that she wasn't very happy either. Old Zhou stayed up most of the night thinking about this, and the more he thought about it, the more he felt like he was having a hard time.
He gestured to Manbao about the style and size of the silver bracelet and whispered, "I've asked, and it costs three taels and seven hundred coins. Manbao, can you lend me some?"
Manbao expressed doubts about his father's ability to repay the debt, "Then where will you save money from in the future?"
"Didn't your second brother earn nearly two hundred coins selling mugwort on the fifth day of the Lunar New Year? I plan not to let him sell it next year. I'll do it myself and save it for a few years. By the time you get married, I'll definitely be able to pay it back."
Manbao: ...
She didn't even bother washing her face or combing her hair. She simply put down the wooden basin and pulled her father along to talk about business. "Dad, you can't save money like this. Look at you. After all these years, you only have a little over a hundred coins in your pocket."
Old Zhoutou: ...What can he do?
All the money earned by the family went directly into Qian's hands. His sons could pay only 60% to the public treasury, but he handed it all in. This private money was saved by him through hard work.
Old Zhou was very worried.
What can Manbao do?
I could only express my deep sympathy to him and give him a suggestion, "Why don't you sell your cigarettes?"
Keke said that smoking is bad for the body, and sitting next to smokers is not good either. Manbao has long wanted his father to quit smoking.
However, although Old Zhoutou likes Manbao, he is not willing to give up this one of his few hobbies. Therefore, no matter what he says, he will still smoke when he turns around.
Zhou Jin didn't smoke when he was young. He didn't even know that such things existed in the world.
He started smoking the year Zhou Yin sold himself. At that time, Zhou Yin sold himself in exchange for a bag of grain, and also helped the people in the village find a job to survive in the county town.
At that time, he took Dalang and Erlang and the people in the village to the county town to carry bags for people. The heaviest burden he had ever carried in his life was placed on him. He couldn't sleep and the work was heavy. A peddler passing by gave him a handful of tobacco, which he smoked and felt very good.
The peddler left some tobacco leaves for him and agreed that he would come to buy the tobacco leaves from him the next year after growing them.
As a result, Old Zhou grew the fruit, but the peddler never came back. It was not known whether he had forgotten about it or died on the road.
Anyway, no one wanted the tobacco leaves he grew, so Old Zhou dried them, cut them into shreds and smoked them himself. Later, people in the county town also started smoking, and began to buy tobacco leaves.
Generally speaking, Old Zhou would only sell his tobacco leaves when his family had no money to buy medicine for Qian.
Because if the family couldn't even afford the money for Qian's medicine, then they would be almost at the end of their rope.
Now that the family is not short of money and his wife no longer needs to take medicine, Old Zhou is very reluctant to exchange his beloved things for money.
So when faced with Manbao's suggestion, he wanted to turn around and leave, but his butt seemed to have its own consciousness and stuck to the stool without moving.
After a while, Old Zhou finally seemed to have found an excuse, "Those tobacco leaves are worthless."
"Who said that? Isn't an ounce of tobacco worth ten cents?"
"Yes, but how much tobacco does your father have?"
"Then why don't you plant more? It won't take up much space anyway, just plant it in the corner of the vegetable garden."
Old Zhou said stubbornly, "If you sell more, it's even cheaper. One pound is only seventy or eighty coins."
"Then ten catties would cost seven or eight hundred coins."
Old Zhou immediately shook his head and said, "How can there be so much? A large handful of tobacco leaves, dried, only makes one pound. It's not worth it, not worth it."
Manbao simply said, "Dad, if you promise to sell half of the tobacco leaves to me, I will agree to lend it to you."
(End of this chapter)
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