But the little girl shook her head. The woman was feeling lonely, and then she heard the little girl speak again.
"I want to buy you more than this handkerchief."
Shen Qingqiu said: "My mother's embroidery shop is now recruiting female workers. There is no need to sign a contract to sell yourself. The monthly salary is half a penny of silver. You can get as much as you embroider. Do you want to come?"
The woman's eyes lit up, and she was obviously moved. But after a moment, her hands holding the swaddling clothes tightened and she shook her head. Shen Qingqiu looked at her suspiciously, "You don't want to come?"
Of course she wanted to go, what she wanted most now was a place that could shelter her from the wind and rain. But she couldn't harm the little girl in front of her.
"To be honest, my family has offended Princess Changping, and it was she who ordered that no showroom in the capital city should accept me. If I go to your house, I'm afraid it will cause you trouble."
“Is that so?” Shen Qingqiu curled his lips.
"You are an honest person," she looked at the woman in front of her, "Since this is the case, I am not afraid to tell you that your family has not offended Princess Changping as deeply as I have. My family and the princess have long been at war. If you are not afraid, why don't you come to work in my house?"
How could she be afraid? She had already been forced into a desperate situation.
Shen Qingqiu nodded. Without further ado, he took his people back home.
When Liu saw the embroiderer her daughter brought back, she was also stunned for a moment, because she had an impression of this woman. She was the expelled Miss Zhao whom she had met a few months ago.
"Shopkeeper?" Miss Zhao looked at Liu uneasily.
Liu didn't want to hurt anyone, so she didn't mention the incident at that time. She smiled and said, "I heard Qiu'er say that you have nowhere to go for the time being. It just so happens that there are some vacant houses in my backyard." That was later rented by Tu Jiu and his family. Liu said, "But there are some guards living in that house, all men, but don't worry, they are all law-abiding-"
Miss Zhao hurriedly said, "It's okay. As long as I have a place to stay, it's fine." She was already in this situation, so why would she care about the difference between men and women?
Liu ordered Jin Cai to bring people to live there. And this young lady Zhao quickly settled down in the embroidery building of the Liu family. She was trembling with fear at first, but after receiving the first month's salary, her mind gradually calmed down. From the bankruptcy of the family's cloth shop, to being cheated by a man, to being driven out of the house by the eldest lady of the family.
Only after receiving her first month's salary did she feel like she was alive again.
Since she was now living and eating at Liu's house, Miss Zhao didn't have to spend much of her monthly allowance, and she could save a lot of it. She started buying some snacks for the shopkeeper, first because the shopkeeper loved them, and second because of her kindness. If she hadn't taken her to the embroidery building, she would have been sleeping on the street by now.
"Ah He." Liu called out.
Miss Zhao, that is, Ah He responded and walked over.
"Our cotton has almost been dried. The next step is to make clothes. I estimate that this cotton can make more than 30,000 sets. Now there is only one month left. I think I will need to hire a lot of people."
Because Ah He came from a cloth shop and had been in charge of many of these matters before, Liu always liked to ask for her opinion.
The Liu family had been very kind to her, so Ah He naturally shared all her knowledge. "Actually, winter coats like this for refugees don't require great embroidery skills. It's just good for them to be practical." Mrs. Liu nodded. "Why not call a few aunties nearby to help? We can charge them based on the price of ready-made clothes. Aunties make clothes at home all day long. Even though they're not very pretty, those little idiots won't tear them apart even after wearing them for months."
After hearing what Ah He said, Liu's eyes lit up.
That afternoon, Chen and Jin Cai went to ask every household, and naturally, many elderly people who were idle at home were willing to take on the job. Liu spent a lot of money to buy tens of thousands of pieces of strong cloth, and they were just waiting to start making clothes.
Unfortunately, it rained heavily for a few days and it was difficult to go out, so I was delayed for a few days.
Taking advantage of the fact that the sky had finally cleared up that day, they set up a large table in the yard, hung the cotton and other things out to dry, then moved out the cloth and started working quickly.
"No, this material is wrong!"
Ah He had lived in the textile industry since she was a child, and she could tell where the problem was just by touching the material. Jin Cai also looked at the material over and over again, "It's fine, I don't think there's any problem with it?"
Then he looked at Ah He with some dissatisfaction, "Could it be that someone is deliberately looking for trouble?"
Ever since Ah He came, Jin Cai felt a little uncomfortable because she was older than her and was more cautious in her work. It seemed that she was about to surpass her.
Ah He sighed. She grew up surrounded by fabrics. Didn’t she know what was wrong with these materials?
"Boss, take a look--" He pulled out a piece of cloth from the pile. It was impossible to tear it apart by hand, but Ah He just soaked it in water, and when he pulled it, it was like tearing paper, and it was easily torn into pieces.
Liu was horrified.
You have to know that these clothes are winter clothes. Rain and snow are inevitable in winter. Winter clothes are for refugees to withstand rain and snow. Wouldn’t clothes that melt when exposed to water be life-threatening in winter? !
"Where did you buy these materials?" Shen Qingqiu also took two pieces of fabric to do an experiment. When there was no water, they were almost the same as normal clothes. Once they were in water, they became waste clothes.
Mother Chen said, "It's the shop where we usually buy the fabric for our clothes." She then pulled her own clothes and said, "My clothes are made from that shop, but they have been washed before, so there is nothing wrong with them, right?"
"There was no problem with the material at the beginning." Ah He said. She touched the material when Mother Chen put it into the warehouse and found no problem.
"No matter what happened, if the material problem is not solved and the clothes cannot be made, the number of refugees who froze to death this year will increase by at least 20,000."
Shen Qingqiu said.
The death of these 20,000 refugees will be directly blamed on Liu's Embroidery Tower, and only then will it be truly condemned by the public.
"If we don't order so much cloth in advance, how can we get it in time..." The cloth also needs to be woven, and this piece of material was also ordered by them a long time ago, but it took half a month to get it together. Now there is only such a short time left, how can we find the material and make the clothes at the same time!
Mother Chen was so anxious that blisters were about to appear at the corners of her mouth.
Shen Qingqiu said: "What if you can weave two pieces of cloth in one day?"
"How is this possible?" The fastest weaver would take half a month to make one piece of cloth.
Ah He still gave the young shopkeeper face, "If it is true as the young shopkeeper said, the cloth comes quickly, then we can make it while weaving, and there will be enough time."
Shen Qingqiu clapped his hands upon hearing this, "Okay, I'll take care of the weaving, you just wait patiently."
She handles it, how does she handle it?
Early the next morning, everyone looked at the strange wooden products that Shen Qingqiu had moved in.
"I asked someone to make this a long time ago, but it wasn't finished at that time. I can try it now." At that time, his son was restricted by the Princess of Changping in terms of the source of fabric, so Shen Qingqiu had the idea of being self-sufficient. Especially at this time, the textile machines of later generations had not yet appeared, and the most ancient textile technology was still used.
It is a waste of manpower and time.
After all, we have come to this era, and it would be unreasonable not to get involved.
"How do I use this thing?"
Shen Qingqiu explained to Ah He. Ah He had grown up immersed in fabrics, so she understood everything at once. She immediately sat in front of the loom, stretched her legs and feet, and wove a piece of fabric in a short time. She stroked the fabrics in disbelief, "It's really that fast?"
Her family is in the fabric business. If the material can be produced so quickly, the profits will definitely increase tens of thousands of times!
"Master!" Tu Jiu shouted from outside.
Shen Qingqiu looked back and saw a series of ragged women following Tu Jiu. "They are all prisoners of war. They only work for free. The Marquis heard that you were short of people, so he asked me to send them to you."
Shen Qingqiu said: "Okay, just right."
Weaving technology is not difficult to learn. Shen Qingqiu made friends with Liu and Jin Cai, and let them teach the female workers. Silk is naturally much cheaper than cloth, and you don't have to calculate the cost when weaving by yourself. Mother Chen is afraid that it will not be enough, so she is trying hard to urge them.
In the end, there were thousands more pieces of material.
Anyway, they were all made for the refugees, and Liu had no shortage of money, so she just made them into ready-made clothes.
We are just waiting to send these ready-made clothes to the freezing refugees in the south in a few days.
——
"The material is ruined. She won't be able to get any clothes, right?"
Winter is coming soon, and Princess Changping is staying in her own Princess Mansion, holding a warm hot water bottle in her arms. Didn't Wang Qingluo introduce the refugee business to Liu? She told her that this business is not so easy to do.
If the clothes cannot be made, the emperor will be held accountable.
If she hadn't discovered that there was something wrong with the material and had made the garment, that would have been even better. When she counted the number of refugee deaths next spring, she would have been responsible for all the murders. Thinking of this, Princess Changping couldn't help but smile sweetly.
"Go, tell me all the news that Liu's Embroidery Tower has received in the past half month."
"Yes." The maid replied and walked out.
Princess Changping picked up the bronze mirror on the table and looked at her face in the mirror. The mark that Shen Qingqiu had scratched on her nose before was not very deep. Thanks to the expensive scar removal medicine, there was only a shallow white flesh mark left. It was usually not visible if she covered it with makeup.
Changping placed the bronze mirror upside down on the table, her eyes vicious. Since she came to the capital, she had been doing somersaults back and forth in the Liu family's embroidery building.
It wasn't a big deal. There was no rift between them, nor any deep hatred.
But at the beginning, the Ninth Prince came out to help them out, and later, Wang Qingluo came out to help the Liu Family Embroidery Tower and oppose her. Now, because of this injured leg, it has become a fight to the death.
Whoever told them to disobey should die.
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