When Bai Hongmei heard what her mother said, she was stunned for a moment, then she raised her head and burst into tears.
Li Yan heard Bai Hongmei crying in the main room. A trace of impatience flashed in her eyes. She shouted to her sisters lying on the kang, "Wei Fang, Wei Hong, stop playing. Your mother is crying again at home. Go back and check on her."
Sisters Wei Fang and Wei Hong were having fun when they heard Bai Hongmei crying in the next room. They reluctantly got down from the kang.
Wei Fang turned around and reminded Hao Chunmei: "Chunmei, don't put away the nine-link ring. I will come back to play with it later."
Li Yan said coldly, "Why are you still playing? It's almost time for dinner. Come back tomorrow if you want to play."
Wei Fang knew that Li Yan disliked her and didn't want her to come and play with Hao Hongmei.
But she was thick-skinned and refused to leave no matter how Li Yan scolded her. In the past, she liked to go against Hao Hongmei the most. Now her home is as cold as an ice cellar and she is always hungry.
She would rather be Hao Hongmei's lackey and stay at her house to sleep on the warm kang than go home.
Seeing that the sisters Wei Fang and Wei Hong finally left, Li Yan picked up the broom and swept the kang mat with disgust.
"If Wei Fang comes again tomorrow, you should think of a way to chase her away. Her mother is pregnant, and she is not working at home to take care of her mother, but running to our house all day long. What's the point of that?"
"That damn girl is lazy and greedy, she's going to lead you astray again."
Li Yan frowned and gave orders to her daughter again.
Hao Hongmei spoke for Wei Fang with a sympathetic look on her face: "It's not easy for Wei Fang either. After Wei Dong left, all the housework was left to her alone. She only came to play with me when she was free."
"Actually, I'm not playing. I just want to sit on our warm kang for a while. Mom, you don't know that her grandma only heats a bundle of corn stalks to heat the kang. Her mom keeps herself warm, but others are freezing."
Li Yan frowned, looking puzzled: "Doesn't she have firewood at home?"
After saying this, she thought that since the beginning of winter, no one from Bai Hongmei's side had gone out to collect firewood, nor had they spent money to buy it.
She couldn't help but sigh, "It's not good to have no man at home. It would be great if Wei Dong was at home."
Thinking of Wei Dong, Li Yan couldn't help but think of the time when Shen Xiao was deceived by Bai Hongmei and Qiao Baozhu stood up for her but was stabbed in the back.
Li Yan felt uncomfortable all over, staring at the direction of Bai Hongmei's house next door with a bad tone: "Humph, the old woman earns so much money but she is reluctant to spend it on buying firewood! She is also reluctant to go out to collect firewood, causing the whole family to suffer from the cold. They are a family of lazy people, just ignore them."
Li Yan lived next door to Bai Hongmei, so Jiang Sen and Bai Hongmei were secretly working together to collect shoe soles and resell them to Qiao Baozhu, so she naturally could not hide it from her eyes.
In order to make Li Yan shut up, Bai Hongmei asked her mother to send her half a pound of White Rabbit milk candy to seal her mouth.
Li Yan accepted the White Rabbit milk candy and pretended not to know about their private dealings. She also turned a blind eye to the sisters Wei Fang and Wei Hong who came to her house to stay at home all day long.
"Mom, we live together, so we'll see each other every day. And Wei Fang's mother is quite pitiful, if we can help her..."
Hao Hongmei's temper is very similar to her mother's, both of them have a sharp tongue but a soft heart. Hao Hongmei usually didn't get along with Wei Fang, but seeing that Wei Fang was pretending to be pitiful, she didn't care about it anymore.
"Just do whatever I tell you to do. Children shouldn't ask about adult matters. If you don't obey, I will send you to your grandma's house for a few days tomorrow."
Li Yan said so and did so.
The next morning, Hao Hongmei was grabbed up early, packed with clothes, and sent to her grandmother's house.
Wei Fang ran over after dinner but was turned away. She waited at home for a whole day but did not see Li Yan and her daughter come home.
"What's going on?"
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