Fenghou

Chapter 356
At night, in the small building of Lu Mansion's inner house, two young ladies hid barefoot outside the door and eavesdropped.

In the room, Mrs. Xu is teaching Lu Xiu the art of the house. Tomorrow, Lu Xiu will get married. According to the tradition, the mother must explain the art of the house to her daughter in detail the night before the wedding.

Lu Xiu's mother had already died of illness, and this responsibility fell on Mrs. Xu's shoulders.

In fact, Lu Xiu also has a biological aunt. Her husband is a Ph.D. in Yuezhou, and she is very close to Lin'an. However, her husband happened to be sick.

There were no antibiotics in the Song Dynasty, and if a slight illness was not treated in time, it would lead to serious consequences such as death. Therefore, whenever a family member was seriously ill, the whole family would be on the verge of a formidable enemy.

Mrs. Xu was Lu Jin's concubine in the fifth year of Zhenghe. She was originally a tea princess in Bianliang Fanlou. They all marry into rich families or officials and become concubines.

Mrs. Xu is Lu Jin's favorite tea princess. Every time she comes to drink tea, she orders the tea. She gave birth to a daughter, Lu Wen.

In the sixth year of Xuanhe, Lu Jin's first wife, Mrs. Pei, died of illness. At that time, Lu Yihao wanted to marry his son a widow from a famous family as a continuation, but soon the Jingkang disaster broke out, and the Lu family also began to live in exile.

Until the third year of Jianyan, the whole family fled to Lin'an. Mrs. Xu's persistence and meticulous care of the family finally won the approval of her father, Lu Yihao.

"At first, there will be a little pain and a little blood, but don't be afraid."

Mrs. Xu has already said the key point, not only Lu Xiu was blushing, but also the two young ladies outside were blushing. But his eyes were wide open, and he listened intently, for fear of missing a word.

It wasn't until Mrs. Xu spoke too bluntly that she herself was embarrassed and used the excuse of pouring water to avoid embarrassment, so Yu Ying slipped away like a thief.

Back on the bed, Yu Lian quit. She insisted on telling Yu Ying what she hadn't heard. Yu Ying added fuel and jealousy to her, and the two of them leaned on their pillows, giggling and laughing.

That night, not only Lu Xiu couldn't sleep, even Yu Lian and Yu Ying were tossing and turning, and it was difficult to fall asleep. It was not until four o'clock that everyone was too sleepy and fell asleep.

At dawn the next day, Yu Lian and Yu Ying got up, they had a lot of things to do today, from now on, they will always be with Lu Xiu.

Originally, Lu Xiu had a personal maid, Chun Tao, who had gone home with her parents the day before yesterday.

There is a reason for this. The Song Dynasty was not the Han and Tang Dynasties. The maids in the Song Dynasty did not sell themselves as slaves. They just signed an employment contract and came to a rich family to work as maids. When they reached the end of their marriage age, they went home to marry.

Maids get wages every month, and the price is not cheap. A rough servant girl is thirty yuan a day, and an ordinary maid is fifty yuan a day. If she is handsome and fair-skinned, it will cost a hundred yuan a day in a big city. The family also has to take care of food, lodging and clothes, earning much more than ordinary bartenders.

If Chuntao gets married with Lu Xiu, it will be called a dowry maid. Most of the dowry maids are housemaids, that is, they live outside the master's bedroom. It is often difficult to avoid the master's intercourse, so most of the housemaids will eventually become Concubine.

But not all the parents of handmaids are willing to have their daughters to be other people’s concubines. In fact, most of the parents in the Song Dynasty are not willing. Concubines are lifelong slaves. People even hope that their daughters can marry people and be housewives in an upright manner.

It was because of this unspoken rule that Chuntao's parents did not want their daughter to be a dowry, so they took their daughter away and found another head of the household to be a maid.

Yu Lian and Yu Ying hid under Chen Qing's wings because both their parents died and they were homeless, and there were too many tigers and wolves coveting them outside.

Lu Xiu also got up, and the two of them briefly washed and washed her. Today, some professional bridesmaids will come to dress her up.

Yu Ying yawned wearily and said, "Girl, I heard that the wedding reception will be in the afternoon, and it's still very early, why don't you squint for a while longer!"

"You two, didn't you hear what you were talking about last night without sleeping, so excited!"

Yu Lian and Yu Ying were taken aback, "Girl, can you hear it from next door?"

"This wooden wall is not soundproof, and it's so quiet at night. I can hear what you guys are saying, but you can't hear the details clearly, and you still laugh so ambiguously."

In fact, Lu Xiu suspected that when Mrs. Xu was teaching her the art of the house, the two little girls were eavesdropping outside. She had an intuition that the two of them were too quiet at that time, which was unreasonable, but she had no evidence. It's not easy to explain this kind of thing.

"We were laughing at Chuntao last night. She obviously wanted to marry the girl, but her parents didn't agree, so she had to leave crying. We are glad that we have no parents and can make decisions for ourselves."

This was the content of their conversation last night, but it was by no means the main content. Those embarrassing words should not be heard by others.

At this moment, footsteps were heard from the other side of the stairs, and Li Mei walked upstairs.

"I guess you need help here, so come and have a look!"

Li Mei was also wearing a precious white jade bracelet, which was of course given by Lu Xiu. Li Mei was her best friend and her second sister-in-law. Of course, Lu Xiu wanted to give her a wedding present.

But Lu Xiu didn't know that her generous act had inadvertently helped her father a lot. Li Mei told her natal family that this expensive bracelet worth thousands was also a gift from the Lu family, and it could be regarded as saving the Lu family's face.

Lu Xiu pulled Li Mei to sit down, "It's fine now, just talk to me!"

She winked at the two young ladies, and they immediately ran to brew tea and pour water.

"I saw a bunch of boxes downstairs, are they your dowry?" Li Mei asked with a smile.

"It's not a dowry, it's all my personal belongings, mainly books and clothes. There are thousands of books alone!"

Li Mei sighed, "I really envy you. My dowry is too meager. My family made up a lot of things and gave me five hundred crowns. I expected to give me the dowry, but my father took it to my second uncle's house. It's dark."

Uncle Li Mei’s son was doing business in Mingzhou and rented a warehouse. As a result, his goods caught fire and burned the warehouse to ashes, along with other people’s goods. Finally, a lawsuit was filed. Lu Yihao confessed his love, and the warehouse was destroyed. Don't pay for it, but you must pay for other people's valuable goods, which is equivalent to three thousand coins.

The entire Li family was paying for this money, so that Li Mei's dowry was also used by his father to fill in this hole, which naturally seriously affected Li Mei's dowry.

Fortunately, the two families have been friends for decades and are relatives, so the Lu family didn't care too much about Li Mei's dowry.

"Speaking of which, your father has been an official for twenty years. The family shouldn't be in such a difficult situation!"

Li Mei shook her head, "You were born in a very good family, so you don't feel that kind of embarrassment. Let me tell you, my father has been a Xuanzan Sheren of the Eastern Palace for ten years. That was when our family was the poorest."

"why?"

"At that time, we rented a house in Bianliang, rented a small yard, and rented three yuan a month. This was the cheapest location. Then we hired a servant who did rough work and a maid, and the monthly wages of the two were also the same. It takes three pennies.

And my father’s monthly salary is only ten pennies, and it is Qingshui Yamen, there is no oil and water, and there is no land in his hometown, so he lives on his father’s salary, minus the rent and servants’ wages, only four pennies left, one for the whole family Monthly food and drink expenses were all spent from the four pennies, and life was really embarrassing that day. "

"That's not enough!"

"Of course it wasn't enough. My mother had no choice but to dismiss the maid, and ten years passed in a hurry. Later, when my father went to a local government to become an official, life was a bit easier. At least the rent was saved, and the staff subsidy could be used to hire servants, but there was no After a few years, how can you save thousands of coins? I don’t even have a wedding dress, and I will go to the shop with your second brother to rent one in the afternoon.”

Lv Xiu shook her hand and said with a smile: "You are not allowed to go anywhere in the afternoon. I will give you this dress later, so that you can get married in a good way."

While talking, Mrs. Xu shouted from downstairs: "Xiu'er, the makeup bride is here, can you come up?"

"Please come up!"

Not long after, there was the sound of going upstairs, and three young women with heavy makeup came up. They were Xi Niang who professionally put on makeup for the bride.

(End of this chapter)