On the second day, I learned from the head of the house that after the general returned home, he blamed himself for hearing about Master Cai's incident, and felt that his own negligence had hurt his dignity.

It turned out that according to the Zhou rites, not to mention that the common people and slaves could not be literate, even the daughters of aristocratic families could only be under the guidance of Mujiao, holding hemp fir, treating silk cocoons, weaving and weaving, and learning women's affairs. Therefore, when Cai Fuzi learned that the general wanted a little maid in his school to read and write, he thought that the general was despising his talent and learning, and deliberately played tricks and mocked him.

So I packed up the bookcase that my master had left in the house, and asked the housekeeper where he lived, and I came to the door alone with a dozen books on my back. When I went, Mr. Cai had been sick for several days. He came to Qin State alone, with no one to take care of him, and the general personally came to the door to apologize and sent two maidservants to him, but he retreated.

When I saw the locked gate, I had no choice but to climb over the wall.

When Mr. Cai saw me, his hands trembled and he couldn't speak. I simply ignored him and took a clay pot to fry the medicine.

On the first day, without saying a word, the Master poured out the medicine I had decocted, and I left silently;

On the second day, he climbed over the wall and went in to decoction the medicine, but he repeated it several times before handing the medicine, and exchanged a bag of millet for a handful of medicine, but he blew his beard and glared again, and finally drank the medicine;

On the third day, I climbed over the wall to decoct the medicine, and when the master had drunk the medicine and rested, I stumbled beside me to read the scroll he had brought with me last time.

…………

On the seventh day, after drinking the last medicine, the master was able to get out of bed, and the first thing he did was to drive me away with a bamboo stick, because I had been noisy until his ears were calloused.

After returning home, Si'er was not worth it for me, shouting that if I don't learn, I won't learn, and I can still eat and drink. But I couldn't let go of it, and after two days, I went again on the tenth day.

This time, the door of Mr. Cai's house was opened, and I thought it had been burglarized, so I grabbed a wooden stick by the door and rushed in.

"What? Do you want to beat me with a stick? The master sat in front of the bookcase, saw me rush in with a fierce face, and scolded me.

When I heard this, I immediately threw the wooden stick far away: "No, no, no, I thought that the master's house had been burglarized." ”

"Why are you here again today? Ordinary women can't learn to read, your general is too vain! The master snorted coldly and said fiercely.

"It's not the general's fault, it's the little girl who is presumptuous and has thoughts that shouldn't be moved." I knelt on the ground and kowtowed a few times, "Master, Ah Shi really wants to be literate, and I beg Master to fulfill it!" ”

"The boy is literate and studying for the sake of one day hearing the princes and helping the people of the world, what are you asking for?" The master looked at me for a long time and asked in a slow voice.

I never really thought about it, I just felt that there was a thread holding me tightly in the dark. For me, the books in the study are more appealing than the fine food.

"You didn't think about it at all, did you? The quest for literacy is nothing more than a random request made by you through the favor of the head of the family. ”

"Not really!" I couldn't help but retort loudly, "I am literate to know what is right and what is wrong, what is expensive, what is cheap, and what is the way of running in this world?" Besides, isn't it because I don't know this that I offend the Master? Besides, Master, if you can teach me a good little girl, won't it even more obvious that you are talented in learning? ”

The master thought about it and seemed to be shaken a little, but soon shook his head again: "Teach you well, I'm afraid it will be difficult to go to the sky." ”

I knew what he was worried about, so I ran to a sand table in front of the window and took a bamboo skewer to write.

"What are you scribbling on, little boy? Let's go back! The master paced over and looked at it, and was so shocked that it was impossible.

Since I was a child, my memory is better than that of others, and I can quickly embroider the pattern at a glance, and the same is true for reading books, even if I don't know the words, I can remember the writing by reading it twice. What I am writing on the sand table now is the same book that I have been reading these days, and although I don't understand what it says, and I don't know how to pronounce many words, I have memorized how to write it.

This greatly stimulated the Master. He thought about it, and in the end, he was really pestered by me, so he agreed to come down and teach me for three months temporarily.

As a result, the teaching lasted for four years.

Regardless of cold or summer, whether it was windy or rainy, Mr. Cai carried his black broken wooden box to the mansion every day to teach me, so that later the general asked him to discipline the little son of Mrs. Ru in the palace of the monarch was politely shirked by him.

In the winter of the thirty-sixth year of King Zhou, the whole Yongcheng was buried layer after layer of snow, and the master fell on the way to the general's mansion, and after returning to get typhoid fever, he was seriously ill at the age of the second year.

The general took me everywhere to seek a doctor, but he could not be kept by all means.

For more than 1,000 days and nights, the Master exhausted all his strength for me, and his hair was white. On his deathbed, he leaned against his bedside and talked to me in fits and starts.

The master was originally a native of the Jin Kingdom, and he was smart and diligent since he was a child, but his misfortune stemmed from the fact that he had a well-read and well-informed younger brother - Jin Tai Shimo. In the Jin Kingdom, everyone only knows Taishi Cai Mo, but they don't know that there is still him Cai Shu in the world. He has been living in the shadow of his younger brother, and in the end, because of a woman, he was driven out of the Jin Kingdom by his own brother. When he was young, he traveled to various countries but never met talents, lost his wife and children in middle age, and only accepted a female disciple from a humble background when he was old.

Just when I was saddened by the sad life of my master, the master smiled and said, "Ah Shi, how good it would be if you were a man, so when you become famous all over the world, everyone will know that your master is my Cai Shu."

After the Master said this, he passed away with a smile......

I sat in front of the sand table and cried for seven days, thinking about it for seven days, and the Master's deathbed words gave me the delusion of wanting to hear the princes for the first time.

The master had no descendants, and before he died, he asked me to exchange all the things he left behind for food and give them to the mute woman who sold slurry water in the west of the city, so as to repay her for saving her life that day.

Therefore, after he was buried, I chose a day for Si'er to accompany me to collect his belongings.

The master's family is poor, and there are not many things that can be exchanged for food. The stack of bamboo slips that had been piled up in the corner had now been buried with him, and now apart from a few clothes and a black-brown plain lacquer box, the only thing left was a hanging kettle that he had cooked and eaten.1

"These things are only enough to exchange for a pot of corn, and Master Cai's life is too miserable." Si'er sighed as he looked at the empty room.

"The rewards that the Master has received in the past few years have been replaced by books, not to mention coins, and even clothes and food are insignificant to him." I opened the lacquer box and took out a dozen coins from it and handed them to Si'er, "There are still some left, put it away, and hand it over to the dumb woman when the time comes." ”

"This is your belt?" Si'er's eyes were sharp, and he immediately saw another thing in the lacquer box.

This is a two-finger-wide cyan belt embroidered with double rows of moire, which I made for my master at the end of the year before last, but I have never seen him use it, and I thought he thought that my handiwork was crude and refused to use it, but now it seems that I am afraid that I am reluctant to use it.

What have I done for the Master, but what have I done for Him......

"Why are you shedding tears again?" Si'er took a handkerchief and gently wiped away the tears on my face, reached out and took the belt out of the box, "Master Cai doesn't need it now, you better keep it for yourself!" ”

I took a breath and put my belt and clothes in one place: "The belt embroidered with silver thread on the silk may be able to change a few more handfuls of corn." When the master first entered Qin, he suffered from the heat, and if it weren't for the bowl of pulp water sent by the dumb woman, I wouldn't have met him. In this way, the dumb woman is also gracious to me. ”

"Then you can keep this, it's not worth it." Si'er found something strange under the quilt and handed it to me. I took it and saw that it was a two-headed bird made of dark brown pottery that the Master used to hang on his hand to play with, and although it looked rough and strange, it was the Master's favorite object.

"I'll keep this! The rest of the things were a burden, and I had to change them quickly when there were many people in the mid-day market. "I put the pottery bird into a small hanging bag close to my body, and then wrapped up the valuable things with Si'er and went to the West Market.