Chapter 11: The Market
After entering the town gate, Tang Luwu would secretly glance at Li Taohua from time to time.
She thought she was hiding it well, but every time she looked at Li Taohua with those deer-like eyes, she would shrink back when Li Taohua looked over. The latter was not blind, so how could she not feel it?
"What are you looking at?" Li Taohua rolled her eyes.
It is also very beautiful when a beautiful woman rolls her eyes.
"Sister, this is a look of admiration." Qin Huiyin said, "Mom, you are so smart. We saved two cents again."
"How is this clever?" Li Taohua was in a very good mood after receiving her daughter's praise. "It's just that I'm too poor, so I save as much as I can. If I had money, I wouldn't be so stingy about these two cents. Huiyin, you have to remember that women shouldn't spend all their time talking about love and affection. Without money, everything is useless. Without money, even the most beautiful girl will become a shrew. Women are flowers, and they must be pampered. As long as they are well cared for, wild flowers can bloom. If they are not well cared for, peonies will become wasteland."
"Mom is right. I want to learn from you."
"Don't learn from me..." The light in Li Taohua's eyes disappeared and became dim. "You have to live better than me."
Li Taohua took the two girls into the pawnshop.
The pawnshop clerk picked up the silver hairpin, looked at it, and said, "This hairpin is a bit old, not worth much, just one or two taels of silver."
"One tael of silver?" Li Taohua frowned. "Okay, this bachelor sold it to me half a month ago and said it was a solid silver hairpin, exactly three taels. I said he cheated me. Let's go and settle the score with him."
Wang Laowu is the jewelry seller next door, and he is the uncle of the shopkeeper. One sells jewelry, and the other runs a pawnshop. If you say there is no twists and turns in the middle, no one will believe it.
When the waiter heard that it was related to Wang Laowu next door, he quickly stopped Li Taohua and said, "Wait a minute, let me see if there is something wrong with this scale."
"Hurry up and weigh it. If it's not right, I'll go find Wang Laowu. Little brother, you have to help me testify later and let everyone know that Wang Laowu is not honest."
The guys usually serve honest people who have pawned their belongings at home because they are in urgent need of money. Generally speaking, these people dare not offend the pawnshop and will just pay whatever the pawnshop owner says. Even if they want to bargain, they will be polite, unlike Li Taohua who talks so loudly that even passers-by are startled.
The clerk took a closer look and said reluctantly, "It is indeed three taels of silver."
In fact, it was less than three taels. However, since it was Wang Laowu who sold it to her, if she said it was less than three taels, and she ran to the other side to make a scene, affecting the business of the other side, the shopkeeper would tear him apart.
Li Taohua patted her chest, feeling relieved: "I'm glad I didn't get cheated. Several girls in the village are getting married and will need to buy jewelry. I will introduce them to Wang Laowu to buy them."
The guy looked better after hearing her say this.
"By the way, these clothes are out of style and I don't like wearing them anymore. Let's pawn them all!" Li Taohua stuffed the bag into the pawn shop counter.
The guy opened it and took a look. There were six sets of clothes in total. The fabric was of medium quality, without any patches, and the tailoring was mediocre. A new set on the market would only cost one hundred cents.
He was just about to say twenty, but when he saw Li Taohua's bright eyes, he suddenly felt that this woman had seen the world and would not be easy to cheat, so he said forty.
"Okay, then we'll all die."
A silver hairpin cost three taels of silver, and six sets of clothes cost a total of two hundred and forty coins, so they earned three taels of silver and two hundred and forty coins.
After leaving the pawnshop, Qin Huiyin asked, "Mom, did you really buy that silver hairpin from across the street?"
"No!" Li Taohua answered casually, "I deceived that boy on purpose. Luckily he was guarding the store today. If the shopkeeper was here, it would be hard to deceive him."
Li Taohua came over and said to Qin Huiyin, "I was shopping once and saw the pawnshop owner secretly giving their pawned items to Wang Laowu. It seemed that he was making the old items new and selling them again. This uncle and nephew are both profiteers. Since there is a chance to take advantage of them, we must not miss it."
Tang Luwu followed Li Taohua and Qin Huiyin with a backpack on her back, her eyes full of admiration for Li Taohua.
The villagers mentioned Li Taohua and said that she was restless and flirted with different men, and that she was the reincarnation of a fox spirit. They also said that women from good families would not be evil all the time, and that Song the Hunter and her father were bewitched by a fox spirit and sucked its essence, which was why they got into trouble one after another.
She also disliked Li Taohua, not only because of the villagers' comments, but also because her father spent most of his earnings on her. After her father got into trouble, she scolded him all day long and didn't feel sorry for him at all. As a stepmother, she didn't have a good relationship with her stepchildren, and she never thought about how to integrate into this family.
When Wang Juhua's stepmother first married into the village, she pretended to please the siblings for half a year, but her true colors showed up when she had her own child. Li Taohua had no such understanding at all. As soon as she married into the family, she had the final say in the entire Tang family, and everyone in the Tang family, big and small, had to look up to her.
No matter from which perspective, she is not a good woman, let alone a good wife or stepmother.
But now, she felt that Li Taohua had an indescribable charm. She was glowing, and this was something she didn't have.
"Sister Luwu..." Qin Huiyin turned around and waved in front of Tang Luwu, "Why are you in a daze? I called you several times."
Tang Luwu came back to her senses and asked blankly, "What's wrong?"
"We are going to the pharmacy now." Qin Huiyin said again, "Did you bring the prescription?"
"Yes."
When he came out of the drugstore, there was one or two taels of silver less in his purse, but twenty more bags of medicinal materials in his backpack.
Tang Luwu was worried that Li Taohua would be angry, but Li Taohua didn't say a word from beginning to end. She paid the money when she was required to and took the medicine when she was required to.
"Don't look at me like that. I promised Huiyin that I would buy medicine for your brother, and I will keep my word. You don't have to thank me, thank Huiyin instead!"
"Thank you, Auntie. Thank you, Yinyin."
Qin Huiyin held Tang Luwu's hand.
Tang Luwu blushed and retracted her hand.
Her hands were rough and calloused, while Qin Huiyin's skin was delicate and her palms were as soft as tofu.
"We will be a family from now on, and it's only natural for family members to take care of each other. Let's go buy some rice and flour."
The main purpose of this trip was to buy rice and flour. First, there was nothing to eat at home. If she didn't find a way to save herself, she didn't know what would happen to the others. She would become a wild vegetable spirit anyway. She would eat wild vegetables in her dreams and even her saliva would taste like wild vegetables. Second, they couldn't just sit there and wait for death, at least she couldn't. She had to make money.
Coarse flour is five cents per pound, and fine flour is eight cents per pound. Qin Huiyin decisively chose the coarse flour to save money.
Rice is also divided into several qualities. The first is broken rice mixed with stones, which is a bit yellowish. It is obviously damaged for unknown reasons, such as getting soaked in water during transportation, and then not drying enough after being soaked, and then it becomes like this. This kind of rice is not expensive, four cents per pound.
The second kind is also broken rice, but without stones and not yellow. It costs six cents.
The third type is refined rice, with each grain being full and plump, and this also costs eight cents.
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