Chapter 50: Thick-Skinned

Proofread by Claire.KK

Ye Xiaoxian was in a good mood that day.

She went to a carpentry on her way back and bought a handcart.

There were two big wheels of this handcart and it won’t take much effort to push it. They could put cold jelly and shortbread in it when they came in to town to do business.

“Little Ye, you really bought a handcarf?” Li Hongmei saw Ye Xiaoxian came back pushing a handcart and she was surprised with joy.

Ye Xiaoxian was beaming with happiness as well. “The handcart is not expensive and it only costs three hundred coins. I can make that amount of money by cooking a meal for Miss Liu so Baoshan won’t need to work that hard carrying cold jelly on his should anymore.”

…

“Ah-ha, are you worrying about Baoshan?” Li Hongmei patted Ye Xiaoxian’s shoulder and teased her.

“We’re family after all!” Ye Xiaoxian blushed again and continued, “If Baoshan is not available, we girls can manage to do it as well.”

“Oh, is it?” Li Hongmei sized up Ye Xiaoxian one more time and found he being different from her usual self.

“Look at your face, as red as plum blossoms. Did you meet Baoshan just now?” Li Hongmei asked tentatively, “or, did you meet other men?”

“Ma, what did you say? I just met Baoshan on my way back and we didn’t chat much!” Ye Xiaoxian felt rather shy and changed the topic hurriedly, “Ma, how’s business?”

Once talking about business, Li Hongmei felt a bit not in the mood. “The cold jelly still sells well as usual but the business of shortbread didn’t go very well. We didn’t sell much for the whole day. It’s already this time and there were still half bucket left.

People usual ate shortbread for breakfast and some probably buy one for lunch but it was already afternoon and they wouldn’t sell anything more if they failed to sell any now.

“Little Ye, I swear that I’ve tried my best to sell the shortbread but I don’t know if it’s because of the hot weather, everyone said that they haven’t got the appetite,” said Li Hongmei pitifully.

Ye Xiaoxian found what she said make sense. It was not an easy work to sell shortbread in summer and they didn’t taste any good when they went cold and but only tasted greasy. She decided that if the business of selling shortbread was still not going well, she would not sell them for this time period.

As they are doing food business, they need to bring forth the new cuisine through the old ones.

…

By dawn, the tree of them were pushing the handcart to come back to the village.

Previously when they came back after selling things, Ye Xiaoxian usually carried a pair of empty buckets and Li Hongmei carried an another pair of empty buckets. Now they had a cart, and they could put all the things on it. One person controlled the direction in the front, and the other two were pushing at the rear of it. It was less troublesome and more labor-saving.

When they reached the entrance of the village, they saw quite a few villagers sitting on the old banyan there.

Seeing that they had used handcart, these villagers started to whisper to each other.

“Look at those women. They were carried their things with shoulders in the morning and they had a handcart when they came back.”

“The wood looks new. They must have just bought it.”

“Tut-tut, since they have lived separately, they become better-off day by day!”

“What is so good even if their life is better-off? Those people have no morals. One was a harlot in her early days and the other who was supposed to be the elder-daughter-in-law, has become the second-daughter-in-law. I saw them bathing in the river last night. And men and women were mixing up together.”

“So thick-skinned?”

“You are right there!”

“…”