Outside the large kitchen of Zhao's mansion, several cooks sat in the sun, whispering to each other while picking vegetables.

"I heard that some time ago, a big girl named Ruhua was beaten by Madame?"

"Isn't it? Almost killed! One of the short and fat cooks with a blue background and white flower handkerchief on her head was selling off her well-informed news, lowered her voice, and mysteriously said to everyone: "That Ruhua climbed into the master's bed, and before she entered the alley, she was caught by her wife!" The lady didn't have a seizure on the spot because of the old man's face, and later took advantage of the opportunity for the old man to go out, so she made a fuss. ”

The cooks laughed in amazement when they heard this, and hurriedly asked whether this was true or false.

"It's true! I listened to the whispered discussions of those maids when I delivered the food at noon, and if there was a word that was false, you could smack me hard. Humpty Dumpty swore by the Celestial Gambling Curse.

"What you are talking about is the tall maid with a melon seed face and a pair of fox eyes?" Another cook leaned over and whispered.

"That's her!" All the cooks nodded.

"Hey, that's what you said!" Later, the cook lady was surprised: "That maid looks very cowardly, once I bumped into Jin Yu and scolded her, and finally beat her twice, but she only lowered her head and wiped her tears with a handkerchief, and she didn't dare to say a word back." Such a person, she has the courage to climb the old man's bed? ”

"This is called knowing the face of the person but not the heart!" Humpty Dumpty smiled meaningfully, "Who doesn't want to pick up tall branches and fly away?" It's just that I have to think about whether the hair on my wings has grown. ”

"It's shameless." Someone scolded, "Why didn't Madame beat this foxy thing to death?" ”

Humpty Dumpty Cook smiled contemptuously and said, "What kind of faceless background are you and our wife?" She wasn't ...... yet."

"Don't say it, someone is coming." Just as he was talking about the lively place, a chef with sharp eyes saw two figures flashing in the flowers in the distance, and hurriedly reminded everyone.

The cooks hurriedly shut down, scattered some, and went their separate ways.

After a while, Yan Hong walked around the flower tree with a gentle cane wound that had not healed, and shouted to one of the cooks: "Sister-in-law Liu, Madame has ordered, in the future, Ruhua will work in the big kitchen, you can take it down and arrange it." ”

Sister-in-law Liu looked at Gentle a few times in surprise when she heard this, wiped her wet hands on her apron, and agreed repeatedly, waiting for Yan Hong to say a few more words, and walked away, before she frowned and said to Gentle with a little disgust: "What will you do?" ”

Although Wen Wen has been lying in the house for more than ten days to recuperate, she has also heard a lot of gossip, and the three maids in the same room with her are very cold to her, and she has long been accustomed to looking at people's faces, and she is not afraid of bites when there are more so-called lice, and she is full of worries, and she has no time to pay attention to Sister-in-law Liu's attitude, so she only said lightly: "Nothing." ”

Sister-in-law Liu was very dissatisfied with her attitude, and felt that this girl really regarded herself as a lady, so she pouted contemptuously and said, "Then you will burn the fire and wash the vegetables and do chores!" Remember, this isn't the room you used to be, take away your frivolous appearance and do things with ease. ”

Frivolous? Gentleness almost lost her smile, what kind of frivolity could she have as a living dead like her, who couldn't even stand steadily, and was haggard and pale as if she had just crawled out of a grave? But she didn't bother to argue, let them say what others liked, she just nodded, and in a blink of an eye saw a big pot of bean sprouts soaked at Liu's feet, so she walked over and brought the vegetable pot to the wooden table in the kitchen, and stood at the table to pick it up.

"Bring it out." Sister-in-law Liu shouted to the kitchen: "That wooden table is for cooked vegetables!" ”

Gently looked at the empty wooden table at the moment, frowned slightly, and said: "The injury on my body is not healed, I can't squat, I can use this table for the time being, can't I wipe it clean in a while?" ”

"Isn't it just a little cane wound, it should have been healed for a few days, right? You're not here to be happy, don't take Joe before it's too late. The short and fat cook took the green vegetables that were being washed in her hand and said to Wen Wen: "After picking the bean sprouts, come and wash the green vegetables, pick up the insects, and carefully order more water than a few times." ”

Bugger! stared at the big pot of vegetables with a gentle headache, and then looked at the kitchen girls around them who were waiting to watch the play with a gloating smile on their faces, and turned their hearts sideways, rolled up their sleeves, and walked out of the kitchen with the pot of bean sprouts, enduring the pain of the injury, squatting on the open ground and picking them. Hmph, isn't it just washing vegetables and picking vegetables? She escaped death, and she crossed over inexplicably! How can you be afraid of such trivial things!

That being said, when she squatted there to pick bean sprouts with someone on her back gently, she still felt hot in her eyes, but the tears that should have been shed had already been shed in the first few days, even if she cried until her eyes were red and swollen, and she begged thousands of times in her heart, God did not send her back to the original world, so she had already sworn that no matter how hard it was, she would never shed those tears that were not helpful to her situation! So she threw her head up in the air, sniffed hard and blinked, letting the hot liquid flow back.

Anyway, now this life is also picked up, and one more day of life is considered earned, and she will not suffer! Gentle Ah Q comforted herself, and suddenly felt that the grievances in her heart had dissipated a little. The cooks around her saw that there was nothing to see, and they gossiped with each other for a while, and then they were busy doing their own things.

No one watching the play does not mean that no one picks on the thorns, the cooks work hard every day, and they have to look at the faces of the big girls who serve in the room, and sometimes they are even beaten and scolded, and they are already full of resentment.

Gentle also understands that Li has long regarded her as a thorn in the eye, a nail in the flesh, and when she was not healed, she was sent here to do rough work, just to let her be bullied and scolded, if she could, she even wished she would die soon, so if she couldn't stand it and made a big fuss, the unlucky person would only be her, and it would also offend this group of cooks even more, provoking them to turn into Bengali to insult her, so she had to swallow her anger and accept it, so she should suffer a little for the original owner of this body. returned the love that encroached on her body.

At this time, she was sent to the stove to make a fire, squatted on the ground and tossed for a long time, wasting a bunch of dry grass and leaves for the fire, and failed to make a fire.

"Let me do it."

Just as she was gently wiping her sweat, a sweet and crisp voice sounded in her ears, and she looked back and saw that it was a little girl of twelve or thirteen years old, combing her hair and wearing a silver clove on her ear, which was not much bigger than a grain of rice, and smiled at her and asked, "Are you new here?" ”

At the end of the day, this was the first time someone smiled at her, and she smiled back and nodded.

"Xiaohuan, you go away." When Sister-in-law Liu saw this little girl, she frowned and said, "You just let it be like a peanut." ”

"Mother, this sister is new to here, I don't think she can make a fire, it's better for me to teach her, so as not to miss the time of the aunts." Xiaohuan talked casually, while holding the flint and velvet in his hand, he lightly and skillfully lit the fire, lit the hay and stuffed it into the stove, picked up a few dry branches thinner than his fingers and added them, waited for the fire to slowly rise, and then added branches that were not much thicker than his fingers in turn, and finally put the chopped firewood into it.

While she lit the fire, she told Gentle what needed attention, and after a while, the fire that Gentle hadn't lit for a long time was already blazing.