As soon as the Chongyang Festival passed, the cold dew followed. The joy of the autumn harvest diluted people's tired bodies. A row of slender and soft weeping poplar branches by the pond, like willow eyebrows, have begun to turn from emerald green to gold. Some of the leaves have fallen in the wind, and most of them have landed on the surface of the pond, and a small part has fallen on the embankment. The little fish came out of the water and jumped on top of the willow leaves, what did these naughty fish want to do? Is it a provocation? Or do you mistake the leaves on the yellow water for your little friends? They're having fun. No one cares about their happiness and childlike innocence, and the fish are sometimes as happy as people, and this scene is difficult for others to capture.

Fang Yunqing still went out very early. The load of goods he picked up didn't look too heavy, that is, eighty or ninety pounds. However, the ancients said well: there is no light burden on a long road. Fang Yunqing has walked almost more than fifty or sixty miles every day, and the burden on his shoulders is not simple. He Xianxiang usually strictly controls the weight of her husband's burden and does not allow him to gamble. Every day, he is asked to go early and return early, and she will wait for him at the entrance of the village at a fixed time, which is a perennial rule.

Fang Yunqing sells porcelain jars outside during the day, and He Xianxiang makes lunch and brings it to him in the morning, usually cakes from flour stalls, and sometimes he also makes some rice for him. Fang Yunqing usually eats cold rice at noon, which is fine in the summer, but in the second half of the year, the situation is different, sometimes he will have a stomachache after eating, Fang Yunqing also endured it and passed, he didn't dare to tell He Xianxiang about it, for fear that she would worry.

He Xianxiang cooked her husband's lunch and put it in an iron box, and went out to help Fang Yunqing sort out the goods. The youngest son, Fang Qiuxiang, walked into the kitchen and saw the fragrant food in the uncovered lunch box, so he took the scoop and scooped it up and ate it secretly. He Xianxiang came back and found that his son had eaten more than half of the food in the lunch box, so he was so angry that he raised his hand and hit him, Fang Qiuxiang put down the spoon and ran, and his mother chased him out and shouted: "Don't run if you have a kind, see if I don't kill you?" ”

Fang Qiuxiang ran out desperately, and He Xianxiang chased him to the gate of the stage and came back. It was too late to cook again, so he said to Yunqing: The rice is almost finished by the little debtor. Fang Yunqing asked: How much is left? He Xianxiang hurriedly said: It's only half a box. Fang Yunqing said: Just bring these, eat and talk about it. So the wife re-wrapped the lunch box and stuffed it into the jar. Yunqing picked it up.

Besides, Fang Qiuxiang sneaked home while his mother was out of the room, and saw that the door of his mother's bedroom had been fastened with a copper padlock, and no one was there in the kitchen, so he turned it over in the kitchen and didn't find anything to eat. Walked to push the door of the bedroom room, locked and couldn't be opened, the threshold was high, the door was under the action of Qiuxiang's thrust, forming a triangular gap in the middle, Fang Qiuxiang first inserted one foot in, and found that the vacant place was not wide, so he turned his back and inserted the other foot in, his butt was close to the gap in the door, and his hands were supported outside the threshold, he tried several times, but he couldn't get in, he changed the direction of his body again, tried sideways again, and finally got in. Fang Qiuxiang looked for food in his parents' room, the box was too high, there was no way to find it, so he could only find a relatively low place, and finally found the rice noodle steamed cake hidden by his mother under the bed, which made Fang Qiuxiang surprised, happy, greedy and afraid. He lay under the bed, turned the porcelain bottle over, and put the rice cake in his mouth to eat. After eating, he climbed out of the bed, Fang Qiuxiang was ready to get out like he had just come in, but despite all his efforts, he couldn't get out of the door.

At this moment, the sound of my mother's footsteps came from outside. It seemed that the mother had already come home and was about to come and open the door to the room. Fang Qiuxiang was scared, and there was nowhere else to hide in the room, so he could only get under the bed again. After a pause in the kitchen, her mother came over to unlock the room, followed by her sister Fang Caili. I only heard my mother say to my sister: Caili, you scoop up the rice, you cook it for lunch, and I will take your father's clothes to mend it. So Fang Caili took out the rice from the rice bowl and went to the kitchen. The mother sat on the edge of the bed and mended her clothes. Fang Qiuxiang didn't dare to take a breath, for fear of being heard by his mother, so he would be beaten again.

Fang Caili cooked lunch and urged her mother to go over to eat. Only then did the mother remember her youngest son and say, "What about your brother, why hasn't he come home yet?" You go and get him home, you go and see how I clean him up. When Fang Qiuxiang heard it, he didn't dare to squeak even more. Fang Caili came back from looking around outside, so she went to tell her mother, "My brother didn't find it." "Mother said, you look for it again, Caili went out again, and when she came back, she still said that she didn't find it. So the mother put down her clothes, locked the door, and went out with her daughter to look for it. Fang Qiuxiang got out from under the bed and went to pull the door, the door was locked, and he couldn't open it.

My mother and sister couldn't find anyone anywhere, so they had to mobilize their neighbors to go out and look for them. The neighbors said, you eat first, and then go out together to look for it, at this time, other people's families are also eating, we have eaten and gone out to help you find it. He Xianxiang was looking for her son, where was she willing to swallow the meal, although Fang Caili was hungry, her mother didn't eat, and she could only go out with the neighbors to find her younger brother.

The neighbors came back one after another, and none of them said that they had seen Fang Yunqing's youngest son outside. He Xianxiang became anxious, saying that she had raised her hand to beat her son in the morning, but she didn't expect this son to run away in anger. She asked her eldest son Fang Qiuping to find several of her sisters, and the other relatives in the other villages were going to arrange for neighbors to go, and everyone sat down to discuss first, guessing where he would go?

The eldest brother-in-law first asked his mother-in-law: "Could it be that the brother-in-law didn't run outside, but hid in some corner of the house?" He Xianxiang said affirmatively: "I just have a few rooms, I have already searched for them, this room has been locked door, how can he come in?" I must have gone to some other distant relative's house. ”

The second brother-in-law asked, "When did he run out?" He Xianxiang said: "I was beaten out very early in the morning, and I haven't been home, you assign the search route, two people go in one direction to find, people who have not been there will come back immediately to report, and those who find it should come over and tell everyone soon." I'll stay with your eldest sister and Caili to pick it up. ”

The neighbors, the eldest brother-in-law, and the second brother-in-law all went out to find someone again. He Xianxiang was a little tired, so everyone persuaded her to go to bed and rest, but He Xianxiang refused, saying that before she found Fang Qiuxiang, how could she rest alone.

Fang Yunqing's business today has been carried to his grandmother's house, and if he usually has almost or half of his goods, it is estimated that he has already sold almost or more of them. But today, he has turned over three mountains and two mountains, but none of the goods in his hands have been sold, and he sees that the sky has darkened. Fang Yunqing didn't dare to go inside again, if he went inside, he would definitely not be able to carry the heavy burden and go home today. I've been in a similar situation before. So he put his load in the house of the mountain people. The people in the mountains are very hospitable, and they are all more generous, and he not only does not need money when you send things to his house, but also leaves you food to eat. Fang Yunqing has been looking for such a person who can entrust the goods from now on. He thought the people here were strange, and he asked many of the hosts, but none of them were willing to accept him to leave the goods in his own house. Fang Yunqing may not say good things to others, or maybe people are afraid of trouble and don't want to disturb their families. But even if he couldn't speak, Fang Yunqing had learned to endure the goods he had been selling outside for so many years. He knows that this is his own trouble with others, and he can't force others to accept his sustenance. Since no one was willing to accept it, he had no choice but to pick it back. But the feeling in my heart is really not very pleasant.

The reason why Fang Yunqing picked up the load of goods in the mountains as much as possible was because the people on the mountains preferred to use these things to store grain. He sells earthen ceramic jars from the cylinder factory. It's a relatively unpopular business, and few people are willing to do it for a long time. The main thing is that the people who do this business are very hard and need to endure the torture of coolies for a long time. The second is that although these things are easy to use, they are not afraid of insects, rats, fire, or water, but they are not foolproof. Because it is a clay product, it is naturally very easy to break, without impact, and once broken is a pile of waste products, even the value of recycling is lost, and a disadvantage is that it is bulky, occupies space, and it is not convenient to move. Without a fixed position, it is a bit of a hindrance. In the mountainous villages, the houses are generally relatively rich, and the farmers are afraid that the grain will be damaged by mice, so the farmers in the mountainous areas are afraid of the rat infestation, and this kind of clay pottery rat is not gnawed at all, and it is used to avoid reducing the loss due to the damage of the rats. Fang Yunqing has been running around in the mountains for many years, and he has raised his profits very high. Even if they knew that the price was high, they could only endure the pain, and those in the mountainous areas who were restricted by transportation conditions were afraid to go to the market to carry such containers, and it was impossible to ask for them to be sold.

He estimated that this place was more than forty miles away from his village. Moreover, these roads are all over the mountains and mountains, and it is definitely unrealistic to carry this heavy load back tonight. There was a small mountain village in front of him, and he thought that I must put my load here, not to mention that I would have to walk so far in the mountains, and I didn't know when I would be able to get home.