I was a god in the 18th century

Chapter 262 Unexpected Visitor
Eager to show off their prey, the Brown brothers declined the host's invitation and did not stay at Fortress for dinner.

The Brown sisters had no choice but to leave with their brothers. Xia Qingdai presented a lot of banana blueberry bread, banana blueberry pudding, and a can of banana puree, and they returned home with a full load.

The two families were less than a mile apart, but the Brown brothers were off the beaten path. I had to ride a horse around various village roads and walked nearly three miles back and forth before I got home.

The Brown sisters followed behind in a carriage, feeling dizzy and speechless due to the bumps on the unmaintained village roads.

Several young men from the pastor's family also had a harvest today, and they also wanted to hang the prey on their horses and ride around for a while. Owen had said early on that whoever caught the prey today would belong to him.

But when faced with the host's invitation to dinner, the men pondered for a moment and decided to focus on affordability and secondary to showing off.

The dinner at Fucui Villa was sumptuous and exquisite, full of delicacies on jade plates, much more delicious than the dinner at their own home.

Staying at Fucui Villa to dine would not only save their family's food rations, but it would also be very dignified, so they couldn't help but be tempted.

Mr. Austin was thin-skinned and was a little embarrassed to eat and take. But Xia Qingdai's kind invitation to keep the two brothers and sisters was definitely not polite, but he was disrespectful and had no choice but to stay.

The associate pastor, Co. Prince, was even poorer than Pastor Austin's family. He loved to make fun of the manor owner every day in order to earn money. Today, he brought his brothers with him, so naturally he would not leave at this time.

Xia Qingdai was not very impressed by Mr. Austin and others, but she was still very interested in the associate pastor, Co. Prince himself.

The other person has an interesting soul, and his words are often very witty. With him at the dinner table, there will never be a cold moment, and the atmosphere will definitely be joyful.

Xia Qingdai is very willing to support him and welcomes him to come to the manor to have a meal.

There was a cellar of flour, butter, potatoes, peas, lettuce and other food she fed in the manor, which could not be eaten by twice as many little people.

When she airlifted the Lotus Tower carriage just now, she also cut a piece of cod so that she could make fish and chips for dinner.

Just as dinner was about to begin, there was another sound of the mail truck on the stone road in front of the castle.

There was also a letter delivered at this time, probably urgent.

As expected, the letter was delivered on the same day at the expense of the businessman Bill. There is mainly one piece of news - the overseas fleet they jointly invested in, after half a year, the first ship will soon dock at Southampton Port.

"Ah, that's great." Xia Qingdai rolled her eyes happily. The ship came from the east and must have been filled with exquisite goods from the Qing Dynasty.

The fleet that Xia Qingdai invested in would never be involved in the opium trade. Apart from opium, the self-sufficient Qing society had no need for British goods at all.

Therefore, the profit of her ship can be regarded as a loss compared with other highly aggressive merchant ships. After all, it was purely exchanging silver for Qing goods, not bartering.

She was quite willing to trade British textile machines, steam engines and other products from the Industrial Revolution. But British Customs is not stupid. The export of these things is strictly prohibited.

In the United States, which is very close, you have to find commercial spies to work undercover in British factories for several years. You are not even allowed to take away a piece of paper when you leave customs. You can steal some technology purely by remembering.

Not to mention the closed-door Qing Dynasty, which had neither the motivation nor the time to steal troops.

But regardless of national justice, from the perspective of a businessman, Xia Qingdai is actually a huge profit maker.

After all, she uses potatoes, mirrors and rhinestones as capital!
So when she heard that her merchant ship was about to arrive at the port, she couldn't wait to rush to Southampton Port to wait.

In addition to the news about the fleet, there was another thing in the letter that made Xia Qingdai very happy. That was the precious wood that she had written to ask Bill to find, and it had already been found. Bill has successfully purchased high-quality rosewood stored in Mysore, India, from a shipowner, and it will be shipped to the UK around Christmas.

After getting this news, Xia Qingdai could eat one more piece of fried fish.

Since the mid-Ming Dynasty, royal relatives and dignitaries have fallen in love with using rosewood to make furniture. The imperial court would regularly send commissioners to India and Southeast Asia for procurement, and this has become a regular practice since then.

Due to the slow growth of rosewood, it takes hundreds of years to become a useful tree. By the time the logging continued until the Qing Dynasty, the wood was nearly exhausted, and all that was used in the early Qing Dynasty was already in stock.

Now in the late Qianlong period, it is not easy to get another boatload of high-quality red sandalwood, so Bill must be careful.

Bill himself has little interest in rosewood. As a British businessman, he prefers the royal family's Kaya neem wood, commonly known as mahogany.

If nothing else goes wrong, this boatload of rosewood can be put into the warehouse of Fucui Villa. It's no wonder that Xia Qingdai is unhappy, and she has no intention of selling it.

Shortly after the postman left, everyone was eating in the restaurant and listening to Co. Prince telling jokes, when the doorbell rang again.

The person who arrived turned out to be Owen's cousin James, who was supposed to be studying at Cambridge University.

This kind of direct visit without writing a letter first is very abrupt even between cousins.

When young James saw Owen's slightly raised eyebrows when he saw him, he understood in his heart and immediately apologized: "I'm sorry, dear cousin, I think I came too suddenly. I wrote a letter before setting off. It's for you, but the mail coach must not run as fast as the public carriage."

"It's okay, it's okay, you're welcome to come." Irving brought young James to the restaurant, greeted each other and sat down.

Fortunately, Britain has a meal-sharing system, and the servant quickly served James his own dinner.

Immediately afterwards, James began to eagerly share the news he knew with everyone.

"The most lively thing in London right now is the discussion about the mission to the East. Your Majesty wants to send Envoy Macartney and Deputy Envoy John Staunton to take an ocean-going ship from Portsmouth Harbor to go to the East. To congratulate their emperor on his birthday is said to be to open the door to trade in the ancient Eastern countries.”

"Are you leaving next September?"

"Yes, it is scheduled to set sail on September 26 next year."

Pastor Co. Prince laughed and said: "I heard a naval captain say that Eastern nobles have to shave half of their heads and leave pigtails like rat tails. They are so barbaric and very funny."

"Ah, does the lady want this too?"

"Lady, you need to bind your feet, even smaller than your hands!" Prince stretched out his hand to make an exaggerated gesture.

There was a burst of laughter at the table.

James looked at Co. Prince and said, "Exactly, I also heard the professor talk about it in college."

Xia Qingdai frowned slightly regarding everyone's comments on the Qing Dynasty braids. Although she also felt that the Manchu people's rat tails were extremely ugly, which directly lowered the appearance of the Chinese people by n levels.

But she can complain herself, but she doesn't like to hear others laugh.

Co. Prince, who was the most observant, immediately noticed Xia Qingdai's displeasure, and then thinking of her previously rumored identity as an Eastern princess, he immediately changed the subject knowingly.