Chapter 105 Chapter 105 Update.
"Which Xu?" asked the Second Master.
"A gentleman is content with his duties, and he is blessed by Heaven."
"Have you read? This is what poetry says."
"It was the calligrapher at the library in my hometown who kindly explained the characters to me. I've never read it before. This name was given by my mother. We have a ballad there: 'A date tree grows in front of the door, and it never ages.' 'There's a girl named A Jiao at home, and Le Xu holds her in her arms.'"
In fact, the former is the origin of the name given to her by her grandmother in her previous life, and the latter is the origin of the name given to her by Tian. They happen to have the same character and the same expectations.
"Since there is such a ballad, she should be called Gillian." said the Second Master.
"Yes, but Ah Jiao is a nickname. Our mothers always call their daughters Ah Jiao. If I had given them a proper name like that, then when my mother came looking for me and called out Ah Jiao, all the little girls on the street would have turned around and said, 'I'm here.'"
The water shield and water chestnut both laughed, and even the aloof He couldn't help laughing.
Xing smiled, then realized it later and turned serious.
"You guys are really interesting."
The second master then asked her where she was from, who else was in her family, and whether her parents were still alive.
Ji Xu agreed to all of them, but when talking about his mother, he did not tell the truth about one thing. He still talked about the incident where Tian's grain boat capsized in the Mian River.
The second master glanced at her and gave her a plate of chestnut powder and osmanthus cake on the table as a reward.
He only used some chicken and millet soup and had not eaten any cakes. It looked like it was made by the chef who specialized in cakes in the big kitchen. It was shiny white and lovely, soft but not mushy.
It is said that there are thousands of jujube trees in Anyi and thousands of chestnut trees in Yan and Qin. The chestnuts in Yan are the most famous. I have only heard of chestnut flour cake but have never tasted it, so I accepted it to express my gratitude.
After the second master finished his breakfast, he went to the Alchemy Building and would not come out until the afternoon.
After the second master left, the maids who cleaned the house were able to come in, dust, wipe, trim the candles and add more lamps.
These older maids had time to have breakfast. After eating, Ji Xu told Luan where she was going and took the chestnut powder and osmanthus cake back to the servants' quarters.
Feng and Zhu were washing dishes by the well. Granny Sun felt sorry for them and added hot water to their dishes. They were very happy to see Ji Xu coming.
"Sister!"
"Sister!"
Que and Doufu also came over to take a look.
"Xu, you look really good dressed like this. You really look like a grown-up girl." Que said.
The servants living in the lower courtyard also poked their heads out to look.
"What is this? Is it from the Second Master's room?"
Doufu swallowed his saliva at the chestnut powder osmanthus cake.
Ji Xu gave some to Feng and Zhu, and also shared some with Que and Doufu, and left two pieces for Grandma Sun and Xiaoyao.
"It's so delicious! The things that the Second Master gave me as a reward are really great. After all, Xu has us in his heart. He still thinks of us when he receives such a good gift." Que said after eating.
Feng and Zhu loved it so much that they would pick up any crumbs that fell on their clothes and eat them.
Ji Xu helped his two sisters wash the dishes, looked at the food and supplies at home, especially how much firewood was left for heating the kang, and went back without any further delay.
He and Xing asked someone to hold the ladder while they pasted the door gods on the door. On the left and right were the two gods Shentu and Yulei. Since the second master had painted them with cinnabar before, they did not ask anyone else to do it for them and pasted the door paintings despite the cold.
"Xu, let's do some needlework together."
Yu was in the warm room and said, "There is a pair of unfinished brocade socks in the small basket in front of me. They look very big.
"This belongs to the Second Master."
The things that were close to the Second Master were always handled by Yu himself, such as folding the quilt, making the bed, sewing socks and shoes,
"Although the embroiderer is more capable than me, the second master is used to wearing clothes made by me, so I am bound to be tired," she said.
Ji Xu helped to wind the thread, and since no one else could help, he sat there bored, so he took out his handkerchief, stretched it with a bamboo strip, and embroidered something on it with his clumsy hands.
Yu looked at it and said, "It's a pity that I only asked you to tie the thread and didn't let you touch the Second Master's things."
"My needlework skills are just enough for me to use." Ji Xu said with a smile.
Recently, Ji Xu has been serving in this room. He earns a lot of money and has little work to do. Yu takes care of the boxes and needlework, He Guan serves tea and water, and Xing helps with writing.
There were special maids to do the rough work, and the second master spent most of the day in the Alchemy Building. There were banquets every now and then, and he usually brought Lu, Xiang, and He to the banquet hall to serve.
She only paid attention to the silver charcoal in the fumigation cage in the room, fumigating the robes that the second master would change into when he came back in advance, adding water to the tea stove and stirring the fire, and once it was heated, she had nothing else to do.
But she was not idle either. She took her unfinished embroidered hand towel and went to the warm room to do needlework. She then made belly hugs, panties and socks for her two younger sisters one after another.
There was plenty of charcoal fire here, so her fingers didn't feel stiff even in the dead of winter. However, she was a little worried about her two younger sisters who were doing odd jobs in the small kitchen, fearing that they might get frozen.
Fortunately, she didn't have to keep watch for the Second Master. After finishing her shift every day, she could go back to the servants' courtyard to talk to her sisters, see if they were okay, and sleep with them. Then she would rush to the courtyard early in the morning to help the Second Master get up and wash.
At the door of the warm room, a little girl was peeking out.
"Zhuo, what's wrong? It's cold outside, come in and talk." Ji Xu saw that she seemed to have something to say.
Zhuo twisted his hands and said, "Today is my birthday. I heard from the servants outside that you used to be a great cook in the small kitchen. I knew that from the bowl of blood stuffing we ate that day. I'll give you some money. Can you make me two dishes? I'll treat my good maids to a meal and celebrate my birthday. It won't be a waste of money."
Zhuo was a servant who ran errands in the courtyard. She was not considered a third-class maid and had the lowest monthly salary, which was all used to supplement her family in Zhuo County.
If it was one of the older maids, it would go without saying that on their birthdays, the kitchen manager Zou would prepare wine and food and send them to them as a tribute. But for a maid like her who just ran errands, even if she was given seventy or eighty coins, Manager Zou would not look down on her and would not let her do the job.
"That's not difficult."
Ji Xu agreed. There was an east kitchen in the courtyard, and he originally wanted to earn some money. Later, when he heard that she only had eighty coins, he didn't want her money anymore and asked her to use the money to go to the main kitchen to see if she could exchange it for some meat and vegetables.
"Maybe not very good, but fresh, and exchange it for a liter of flour."
Zhuo exchanged it for a piece of pork liver, and brought back some leftover gourds and radishes, as well as some flour.
When Ji Xu saw such food, he asked Zhuo to go to the lower courtyard and ask Feng for a bowl of calamus pickles that she had made before, without asking her for money.
The two maids who were close to Zhuo were busy running around. They had made an appointment to celebrate her birthday and thought they would not be able to find a cook to make soup with such a small amount of money. Unexpectedly, Ji Xu, a maid who served in the house, was willing to cook.
Ji Xu prepared the dishes. The pork liver was served with calamus pickles, which was smooth and delicious. The gourd was fresh and tasty, and there was also a bowl of noodle soup.
There is a custom of eating noodles on birthdays, but these noodles are usually in the form of noodles or soup. I have never seen a whole noodle like this one, with only one piece in the bowl, long and thin and continuous.
“This is longevity noodles.”
Ji Xu said.
Zhuo asked curiously, "Longevity noodles? How did the term come about?"
"Long noodles mean long life, isn't that longevity noodles?"
The maids in the east kitchen all laughed when they heard this. They set up a table and a dining table on the spot and pulled Ji Xu to sit down and eat with them.
"When is your birthday? We can also pool money to celebrate it for you someday."
Seeing that it was still early, Ji Xu enjoyed the company of these lovely young ladies, so he sat down. They were not interested in her, a native of Kuaiji who had come all the way from afar. While eating, he asked:
"What are the customs and habits of Wu? I've heard it's warm there and the rain is always falling. I've never been there. Come on, tell us about your place."
Ji Xu thought for a moment and said, “There really is such a thing. Suppose a Han man went to Wu to meet a friend, and his Wu friend prepared bamboo shoot soup to entertain him.
The Han man asked, "What is this? It's so delicious." The Wu man said, "It's the bamboo shoots we grow here." Seeing that he was still puzzled, he explained, "Bamboo shoots, when they grow up, they become bamboo."
The Han man nodded in understanding, and after returning home, he cooked and ate it too. However, he was furious and cried out, "How treacherous the Wu people are! They deceived me like this! I decided not to have any more contact with this friend."
"Why?"
"Exactly. Why?"
They couldn't wait to ask.
Ji Xu said, "He thought, since bamboo shoots are made of bamboo, why not just boil the bamboo mat and eat it? But he couldn't bite it no matter how hard he tried. He felt cheated and wanted to break up the friendship."
Zhuo held his stomach and laughed, "Hahahaha, how can you eat a bamboo mat?"
"This guy is really stubborn."
"Even though I've never eaten bamboo shoots, I know bamboo mats are inedible."
The other two girls laughed.
"Second Master is back, and he still has time to tell jokes."
It was bustling here when we suddenly heard a noise outside. We saw Xing with a stern face behind the Second Master.
The two had just returned from a banquet and passed by the east kitchen when the second master stopped. The maids who were supporting him thought he was drunk and had difficulty walking, and were about to call for a sedan chair to carry him when they heard someone telling a joke inside.
Xing was close to the Second Master and heard a hint of laughter from his breathing. She was so angry that she shouted inside.
These little girls shrank back like quails in the rain and didn't dare to talk back.
"The Second Master is back."
He found his crown cumbersome, so he took it off halfway and handed it to Xing. He stood there wearing a long robe, rings, and a wide jade belt.
Ji Xu hurriedly put on her shoes and took over the task of holding the crown. She followed the group into the house to serve. The wooden clogs on the couch were ready. She put the boots that the group had taken off in order at the back, and then took the white jade hook and the belt that Yu had taken from her hand and placed them in order.
Because the room was filled with the aroma of white silk robes and there was hot water on the tea stove for rinsing the mouth, Xing had nowhere to say anything and could only stare at her.
Ji Xu looked at his nose and his nose at his heart, pretending not to see anything, and kept his hands hanging by his side.
After they helped him bathe and change clothes, the Second Master lay down and the Shu brocade curtains beside the bed were pulled down. Seeing that there was no place for them to stay, they tiptoed out and prepared to end their shift.
"Can Gaofu do it?" someone asked in the tent.
Among the four maids in the room, only Ji Xu knew how to cook. When she retreated halfway, they all looked over at her. Ji Xu thought for a moment and said,
"meeting."
"Keep watch tonight." Another voice came from inside the tent.
Ji Xu clearly felt that some of the gazes around her were burning, so she gritted her teeth and stepped out to finish the ointment.
The so-called ointment is ointment; and soup is rice poured with soup.
This paste is made by frying rice with oil and adding sour pickles, which has the effect of sobering up.
Because she was on night watch, they all went back to their rooms to sleep. There was a low footstool by the window in the room, where the maid who usually kept night watch slept.
He opened half of the curtain and gave the Second Master the medicine, remembering what he had learned from watching from the side these days. He poured him some tea to rinse his mouth, lowered the curtain, and put the rinsing bowl, plates and bowls into the outer room.
He brought bedding from the cupboard and spread it on the couch, then extinguished the five-branched jade lamps on both sides.
He left a lamp in his hand to light the ground, then lay down on the couch and blew it out, leaving his eyes in darkness.
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