In the evening, at the construction site in the east of the city
"What a great gift! What a great gift!" Jia Shuanghua shouted while pulling the bicycle.
Ma Dali ran out hurriedly, climbed over the sand pile, jumped over the unicycle, bypassed the piles of cement bags, and came to the outer roadside with a smile.
"Xiaohua, why are you here? What's up?"
Seeing that he was covered in mud, Jia Shuanghua couldn't help but ask with concern: "You--you haven't been to class for a few days? I haven't seen you for seven or eight days."
Ma Dali wiped the sweat from his forehead and explained, "I missed a class this morning. I've mostly been taking professional courses lately. I came here after class and didn't eat in the school cafeteria."
"It's no wonder that no one paid much attention to you." Jia Shuanghua looked around and asked, "Are you guys rushing here?"
Ma Dali smiled naively and shook his head: "No, I'm not rushing, I'll finish the work. It's mainly because there are so many workers coming, and they look so busy and anxious."
Jia Shuanghua was suspicious and asked, "Then-then why is Lingling so busy that she didn't attend class?"
Ma Dali said “oh” twice and explained quickly: “She said she has some work at home and it will probably take her ten days or so. A few days ago, she bought a few more truckloads of sand, soil, and cement, and also bought a batch of stone materials in advance. She said she will be busy soon, so she should prepare more in advance so that the craftsmen won’t be late when they need it.”
"Home?" Jia Shuanghua asked worriedly, "What? Why didn't she tell me? She-she just said she was going to be busy for a while, and asked me to ask her classmates about homework at noon, and then tell her. We had a holiday the other two days ago, and the classmates said the teacher didn't give us any homework, they just reviewed and didn't have any classes. There are two classes with homework today, and I wrote them down for her."
Ma Dali replied: "She said yes. I guess it was probably because her fourth brother was getting married. She didn't say anything specific. I heard it from her brothers when they were chatting."
"Oh!" Jia Shuanghua smiled: "That's really good! She told me that among her brothers, only the fourth brother has not married and has been working on the ship all year round. Her fourth brother is finally getting married, she will definitely be happy. As for the homework - I have to go to her house and tell her, right?"
"No need." Ma Dali explained, "You copy the homework and I'll deliver it to her after dinner later. I'll give her the delivery note and she can take it with her. When she finishes the homework, I'll take it away and quietly hand it in for her during class the next day. We all have classes in the science building, so it's not too far to deliver it to her."
"Oh?" Jia Shuanghua couldn't help but tease: "She has made very thorough arrangements! I'm sure she won't let you down?"
Ma Dali laughed, "She's so busy. If we don't make arrangements in advance, she'll definitely fail once she gets busy. I'll come over every two nights to give her the list of goods and the daily labor income and expenditure. Although she's busy, she hasn't fallen behind in her work."
"She's really amazing!" Jia Shuanghua smiled bitterly: "Without her around, I'd be overwhelmed with my homework. But she's so good, running around at home, school, and the construction site, but she can handle it with ease."
Ma Dali lowered his voice and said, "Lingling is very motivated and hardworking. Her husband has a high salary, so the family can definitely have a surplus of food and accommodation. If it were someone else, they would have stayed at home and relied on their husbands for support, and would never have worked as hard as she does. She has to make money and study on her own, which is quite hard."
"That's right!" Jia Shuanghua shook her head: "If it were me, I would definitely not be able to do it."
Then, she asked worriedly, "Can you keep up with your studies?"
"Yes." Ma Dali nodded: "The homework is quite easy and I can handle it by self-study. Lingling's grades were better than mine before, so she should have no problem."
Jia Shuanghua was more worried, and asked, "You guys always skip classes... Is that okay?"
"Fortunately, there are many people in the class, and each subject has one teacher." Ma Dali laughed: "The teacher only recognizes the general faces, not most of the names, so we can escape."
"That's right." Jia Shuanghua said, "Teacher, please don't call our names too often. Besides, we are all students living outside the dormitory, so the dormitory supervisor can't check on us."
Ma Dali said in a low voice with a little embarrassment: "I am just going through the motions in the classroom now, dealing with it, and handing in homework when it's time. The rest of the time I'm here."
"Lingling is even more exaggerated than you, isn't she?" Jia Shuanghua said with a smile: "She didn't even leave these days, and she didn't even let people see her soul."
Ma Dali laughed out loud.
Jia Shuanghua was envious and whispered, "If I could rely on self-study, I wouldn't want to run around like this every day. I think it's a waste of time. Sometimes I don't have classes in the morning, and sometimes I don't have classes in the afternoon. I just hang around at home and get bored."
Ma Dali thought for a moment and asked, "Well - last time we had a feast at Lingling's house, your cousin said that you two would get married after the Mid-Autumn Festival. Is that about the time? Remember to let me know so Lingling and I can prepare the gifts in advance."
In the days of material scarcity, classmates’ weddings were generally not held in a grand manner; simply inviting guests to drink wedding candy and eat some fruits or snacks was considered a treat.
Most of my classmates would buy some daily necessities as gifts, such as thermoses, enamel cups, spoons, pots, pans and other household necessities.
If they were close, they would give her some more expensive necessities. He had discussed this with Ling Ling before, and considering that their financial situation had improved recently and Jia Shuanghua was their best friend, they planned to jointly buy an electric fan.
He has asked a friend to find him some tickets, hoping to buy an electric fan in time.
When Jia Shuanghua heard this, she avoided his gaze and her face turned red with embarrassment.
"I...I don't plan to get married, so don't prepare."
Ma Dali felt like something big had happened, and asked with concern: "What's wrong? Did something happen? Can Lingling and I help?"
Most of his classmates secretly looked down on him, and only a small number of people did not despise him for being poor and treated him as an equal with true friends, such as Chen Xingling and Jia Shuanghua.
If it were any other girl, he would definitely be too embarrassed to ask, but Jia Shuanghua had a very good relationship with him and Ling Ling, so he asked without hesitation.
Jia Shuanghua's eyes turned red unconsciously, and she said in a low voice: "My aunt...she is against our marriage."
ah? ! !
Ma Dali was startled and asked suspiciously, "You and your cousin have been engaged for a long time, and it's a close relationship. Why is your aunt objecting now?"
Jia Shuanghua was shedding tears but she was laughing out loud.
"He was just a little superstitious before, but now he is getting more superstitious as he gets older. He took my birth date and time and asked his most trusted fortune teller to tell my fortune... The fortune teller said that I was destined to be unlucky for my mother-in-law, and that if she married me, my aunt would not live long. My aunt believed it without a doubt and was firmly against our marriage. Isn't it ridiculous? Materialism has been around for so many years, and there are still people who believe in those fortune tellers all day long... Haha!"
Ma Dali was stunned: "No way? How can you believe such nonsense?"
"He believed it." Jia Shuanghua smiled bitterly: "The funny thing is that my aunt was frightened. Although she loves me in her heart, she dared not even get close to me after being frightened by my aunt. My cousin was very distressed and could not make up his mind. If he was determined, I might still try hard for him. But when I saw him like that, I... I was also discouraged and thought it was better to forget it."
At first she was looking forward to their marriage and even wanted to center it around her cousin.
She thought that she could only apply to Chongqing University, otherwise she would be too far away from her cousin and home; thinking that her cousin liked her to be a teacher, she took the initiative to apply for the teacher training major; he said that foreign languages would be highly valued in the future, so she was even willing to choose English, her weakest subject, as her major.
But ever since my aunt demanded that the dowry must be worth three roubles and one bang, my cousin not only did not stop her, but only said that he would try his best to help collect the money. However, after several months, he did not give a penny. He even advised her to borrow money from Chen Xingling, because Lingling's family seemed to be quite wealthy.
Her parents gave her a small apartment as a dowry, but her aunt disliked it and always said that living in it would be bad for offspring. She suggested selling it and buying an old and small house next door, and then breaking down the walls and moving in together so that the whole family could live together and take care of each other.
The house was allocated by her parents' unit. The old couple was reluctant to live in it and planned to give it to their daughter as a dowry. However, her aunt regarded it as worthless.
The cousin didn't interrupt at first, and she thought he would stand on her side. Unexpectedly, he secretly encouraged her aunt to go back and persuade her parents to sell the house on their own initiative.
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