If she can go to Li's Mansion again, Cai Wei would like to see her great-aunt and ask a question, no, a few days later, there was another funeral in Uncle Anyuan's mansion, the fifth master suddenly fell ill and died, and Hefu began to wear linen and filial piety again.

Within three years, Mrs. Tai lost two sons in a row, and her grief is self-evident, and Cai Weiyuan was worried that her body would not be able to bear it. Although Mrs. Tai is sad, this son has always been the most important to her like the second son, especially when he later made a fuss* being arrested and dismissed from office, so his heart for this son has become weaker, and he has long regarded him as a wasted person, and only pinned his mind on a few grandchildren.

After listening to Mrs. Five's detailed explanation of what a "violent illness" the fifth master had, the rest of the grief turned into anger that hated iron and steel. This son has been sensible and obedient for decades, how did he get old, but he became more and more disrespectful to the old, absurd and nonsense, not only lost his official position, but also suffered from the board, not to mention that he took care of his body at home, but accepted a bunch of little girls from the left and right to come back to be the housekeeper, and gave away one of his old lives.

For a while, he scolded the fifth wife and said: "Even if your master is confused and doesn't know how to control it, why don't you know how to persuade him, and then control those cheap maids strictly, so that he can mess around with his little wife day and night?" ”

The fifth wife's eyes were red from crying, and she said aggrievedly: "Mother, my daughter-in-law persuaded him a long time ago, but where does the master still listen to me now, since he lost his official position, he is no longer the old man before, and his temper is extremely irritable and irritable." I persuaded a few words, and then slapped the table and smashed the tea bowl and scolded me for being twisted out by my vinegar wife. said that it was because I didn't give him an aunt all these years, so I forced him to go to the Qinglou Goolan Courtyard, and then he was arrested and sent to the Shuntian Mansion, lost his official position, and was beaten, and his face was completely lost! ”

The fifth wife was sincerely aggrieved, and cried: "Mother knows, it was the master himself who took the initiative not to take a concubine that day, and I mentioned several times to raise his two intercourse girls as aunts, but he categorically refused. Although he doesn't have an aunt, he has always had two girls waiting for him after marriage, and every few years he comes in with a young and beautiful person. ”

"Now they are all pushed on me, and they keep saying that it is because I am so jealous and unvirtuous that he, the husband, has fallen to this step. I can't go out, I can't see guests, only this idea is a pastime in the room, I have to be jealous to prevent him from being happy, I am watching him obstructive, and I want to suffocate him to death! ”

"The lord said this so powerfully, how can the daughter-in-law dare to persuade him again, and he is afraid that he will make you angry and sad if he sues his mother, so he has to take out his private money, buy a few good ginseng sticks back, and boil a bowl of ginseng soup every day for the lord to replenish his body. But what did I think, the morning before yesterday, the Xinna's Tongfang suddenly ordered someone to ask me to go quickly, and when I went to take a look, I saw the old man lying on top of her, and it was no longer a ......."

Mrs. Tai was also speechless for a while, this man is inferior to women, if the son is going to die, where can he expect his daughter-in-law to control him? Seeing that his niece was crying with red eyes, he sighed, and didn't say anything more, but waved her hand to let her go.

Mrs. Fifth returned to her room, and her roommates had prepared a basin of hot water for her to clean her face. After washing away the tears on her face, Mrs. Fifth lifted the half-wet handkerchief, half numb, half sad, and said: "I always thought that if the old man walked in front of me one day, I don't know how sad I would be. But I didn't want to, but on this day, I would have to rely on this handkerchief dipped in chili water to shed tears. ”

"Mrs. Tai thinks that I didn't dissuade the old man from dying, if I want to persuade him at first, but later, I hope that he might as well die sooner."

Among the words that the fifth master scolded her that day, there were a few sentences that she didn't dare to say to Mrs. Tai. She originally thought that the fifth master was now just suffering a series of setbacks, and then his temperament changed greatly, earlier they were also a loving couple, and they had a good time of respecting each other for more than ten years, and his lack of concubines also made her envied by a group of ladies and wives for more than ten years, and became a good story in the capital.

But I didn't want the words that the fifth master scolded in a hurry, and ripped off the last layer of warm hijab.

"If it weren't for the fact that you are my mother and niece, how could I marry you, or I didn't take a concubine, just to please my mother, are you really for you? I am not as talented as my second brother, so I can only follow my mother's wishes everywhere to please her. Otherwise, if it were according to my heart, I would have accepted seventy or eighty beautiful concubines to come to the room for recreation. I don't have my share in this title, what do you do if you don't have fun in time? ”

Mrs. Fifth sat dumbfounded, letting those words echo in her mind over and over again, but there was no longer the shock and pain she had when she first heard it. It was then that she began to look forward to becoming a widow as soon as possible.

"They all say 'the most poisonous woman's heart', Mama, you have been by my side for decades, you say, have I become such a vicious woman?" A smile suddenly appeared on the lips of the fifth wife, and she asked her to accompany the mother.

The grandmother hurriedly said: "Why did Mrs. say such a thing, like the master, instead of dragging everyone down alive, it is better to go earlier, and it is still clean." Mrs. is also planning for the two young masters. ”

The fifth wife's tears welled up all of a sudden, "I still understand me, my lord, he has this stigma on his back, which makes people unable to raise their heads for the rest of their lives." On that day, the old man had just been dismissed, and the old lady of the Lang family, who had made a marriage with Brother Ming, ordered someone to send a letter, and was very dissatisfied in her words, if it weren't for her granddaughter who had just lost her mother, it would take more than two years to be filial piety, and her family was afraid that after keeping the filial piety, the girl would not be able to talk about the family affair when she was old, but she was afraid that this family affair would be ruined. ”

"Only the old man went, and brought this stigma to the soil together, and after another three or two years, gradually no one remembered this matter, and I could also say goodbye to Brother Rui'er to find a decent daughter. I now have this one son in my name, and I will definitely marry him and help him. ”

Because of the funeral of the fifth master, Cai Wei's niece also had to keep the filial piety of small merits, and in the next few months, she never visited relatives and friends, let alone went to Li Shilang's mansion to find the Zeng family's aunt to solve her doubts. Even promised to write another volume of "Youyang Miscellaneous Records" for King Yingchuan, but it was not until two months later that it was completed, and Mama Du was invited to send it to the palace.

Although Cai Wei's situation in Bofu has finally been better than before since she was able to return to Mrs. Tai's side to serve every day, there are still many places where she needs to spend some more money. Their master and servant used it carefully, and when it came to the winter moon, the cash silver and copper coins in their hands were still used up, so they had to let Mama Guo go out of the house to exchange for silver and come back.

Although Mama Guo brought back the silver along the way, she also brought back not very good news. "Girl, I went around your silk shop again today, and found that none of the shopkeepers who had been installed by the old master were in that shop anymore. I inquired about it and said that they were greedy for money in the store and were all driven away. ”

Cai Wei was not surprised by this, "I think they were excluded from dissidents, although my father hired them, but he never let them sell themselves into slavery, I don't have their deeds in my hands, so it doesn't take much trouble to send them." ”

Mama Guo complained a little in her heart that the deceased Master Zhou was careless, but she didn't think about it, but she didn't dare to say it in front of Cai Wei. Remembering the man I met on the street, I hesitated for a moment, but still said it. "Girl, when I came out in exchange for silver, I saw the son of the Zeng family!"

"Ahh Cai Wei hurriedly asked her, "Has the mother ever talked to him?" ”

Mama Guo shook her head, "I just saw a person on the side of the street from a distance with his appearance, because he was far away, I didn't dare to confirm it, so I had to follow him all the way, and when I saw him enter a pawnshop, I was on the side, and it was easy to wait for him to come out, and I was about to go up and say a few words to each other, when a car suddenly stopped on the side of the road, and a young man on it opened the curtain and said a few words to him and called people into the car." ”

"Pawnshop?" Could it be that something really happened to the Zeng family, so much so that they wanted to pawn things in exchange for silver?

Mama Guo was a little embarrassed and said: "I also felt strange at the time, the old man's family also had a house and land that day, even if he went, shouldn't he have left tens of thousands of taels of furniture to his son?" I was also curious for a while, and when I saw that I couldn't talk to the son of the Zeng family, I also went into the pawnshop and asked him if he was here to be something, and what he was doing. The shopkeeper showed me a golden hairpin with several rubies the size of a fingernail embedded in it. ”

"I remember that my great-aunt had a hairpin like this." Cai Wei said.

"The girl remembered correctly, Mrs. Zeng's hairpin, although she didn't often bring it, she also brought it several times, and I recognized it immediately. The shopkeeper also asked me if I wanted to, and I said that people were afraid that they would come to redeem him, but the shopkeeper pouted and said that the boy had already come to be a man three or four times, and he had not seen him redeem once. I was in a hot ...... at the time, and I didn't know what to think, so I said that I didn't have enough money, so I asked the shopkeeper to keep this hairpin for me first, and on the way back, I regretted it a little! ”

Mom is not wrong, so why regret it? The hairpin was to be redeemed for Aunt Great-Great. My mother didn't know that the hairpin was an unusual ornament passed to her by her mother when her great-aunt got married. Mother asked how much silver it would take to redeem it. ”

"The shopkeeper refused to say how much Zeng Gongzi was, and asked me for two hundred taels. But where do we have the money to redeem this hairpin now, although there are still some silver tickets left, but now we don't know how long we will live in this mansion, and the people in the silk shop have changed, even if we want to go there to withdraw some silver first. ”

"There are priorities, and I ask my mother to take out all the silver tickets we have and count them to see how many there are."

After some counting, there were still nineteen silver tickets left, all of which were in twenty-two denominations. Cai Wei took out one, handed the remaining eighteen to Mama Guo, and picked five small pieces of jewelry from the pair of gold noodles that Grandma Jun gave her as a gift for her to meet, and asked her to take it for another forty taels of silver.

Mama Guo couldn't help asking: "That hairpin is only two hundred taels is enough, why did the girl give me so much, and add her own things to exchange for another forty taels of silver?" ”

"I want to scrape together a total of four hundred taels of silver, half of which is for him to redeem the hairpin, and the other two hundred taels of silver tickets are for the elder brother of the Zeng family. Although I don't know what happened to the Zeng family, if Brother Zeng wants to revive the family business, he will inevitably participate in the imperial examination. He has already won the promotion, and next spring is the year of the big competition, if he can win the championship in one fell swoop, he can revive the family's reputation. ”

But the previous days were extremely difficult, especially for those who were shy in their pockets, and it cost a lot of money to socialize just this move. If it weren't for the fact that she had no plan to support it, Aunt Zeng would never have handed over her family's heirloom golden hairpin to her son to be discarded. Since we have an old relationship with the Zeng family, and have such an unusual relationship, we just think of the Zeng family's hospitality to us for several months, and this time we should also help, and it is not much help, but just a few taels of silver. ”

She didn't look at these taels of silver in her eyes, but her nurse cared, "Ouch, my girl, we only have so much silver left, if it is all used to redeem the golden hairpin and then give a clean light, what if we wait for the silver money to be used?" ”

Cai Wei smiled: "Didn't I keep one more?" With these twenty taels of silver, it is enough for us to use for a while, and if it is not enough, isn't there still a pawnshop? Doesn't your girl still have these golden head and face jewelry, and I don't wear them all day, and I don't feel distressed when I go out. ”

"It's easy to redeem the hairpin, but how can I give the hairpin and silver ticket to Zeng Gongzi at that time?" Mama Guo is embarrassed.

Cai Wei thought for a while, shook her head and said: "We must not redeem the hairpin and return it to Brother Zeng, their men are the most face-heavy, and Brother Zeng will not want us to know his current downfall." It's better to think of a way to send the silver to Aunt Zeng, she feels sorry for her son, and with the silver, she will naturally take it all out for her son to spend, and Brother Zeng is filial piety, and he will definitely redeem his mother's golden hairpin first. ”

She remembered that Xiangcheng said that in addition to seeing Mrs. Zeng in Li Shilang's mansion that day, she also saw a maid who accompanied her, Yinhuan, and she had an idea in her heart.

"I remember that Aunt Zeng's birthday happened to be in the first month, and I had saved a few needles and threads these days, so I even wrapped the four hundred taels of silver tickets together, and my grandmother took them directly to the concierge of the Li Mansion tomorrow, and said that I wanted to see Mrs. Zeng's maid silver ring, and then give it to her. Let's just say that this is the birthday gift I prepared for my aunt of the Zeng family, because I can't go out of the house, and I can't buy a decent birthday gift, so I have to send He Yi directly over with such a bit of rudeness. ”

Cai Wei was also worried that if she really used these silver tickets to buy a few expensive birthday gifts and send them over, in case Aunt Zeng refused to use them for pawn, wouldn't it be in vain, so although she felt that this move was a bit rude, she had to do so.

"With so many silver tickets, the maid shouldn't have swallowed it privately and didn't let Mrs. Zeng know, right?" Mama Guo was a little worried.

"Knowing the current situation of the Zeng family, but still willing to follow the old master, it can be seen that this maid should be a loyal servant, and she will not do such a thing in the future." Maybe there are some side reasons why this maid is willing to follow Mrs. Zeng without abandoning, but if this is the case, then she will not hide this silver privately.