Evening Shaohua in the Red House

Two flowers bloom, one branch each.

In the Rongguo Mansion in the capital city, the stewards sent to Yangzhou to give gifts have already set off, and all the houses have sent congratulatory gifts.

Li Wan also sent two copies of ancient books in the dowry, and thought that the twelfth day of February was Daiyu's birthday. When she used to read books, she liked the clever and clear sister Lin very much. There happened to be a short piano in her dowry, which was small and exquisite, just suitable for a little girl, so she ordered someone to find it out and gave it to Daiyu as a birthday present.

In addition, Fu Ling's father, Liu Youfu, also brought a few stewards with the Jia family's boat, carrying 200 taels of gold from Li Wan, and they went to the south of the Yangtze River this time to sell some new spices, embroidered silks and satins back to Beijing for sale. The second is to follow Li Wan's order to see if there are any suitable hills and fields, and if so, buy as much land as possible.

At noon that day, Li Wan took a nap for a while, and when he woke up, seeing Jia Lan still asleep, he went to the study.

This study room was originally used by Jia Zhu to study and take a nap. After Jia Zhu passed away, the study room became vacant, and Li Wan ordered someone to clean it out some time ago.

The study room is made up of four south rooms. It is very spacious and elegantly furnished. There are several desks and sofas. They are all made of high-quality rosewood with fine carvings. There are several paintings by famous masters on the wall. The painted calligraphy and paintings, the lily incense burning in the gilt censer with two ears in the corner, the green smoke curling up, the dark fragrance and sparse shadows, make people feel calm.

Li Wan put down the brush, blew on the paper, and handed it to Fu Ling to copy.

During this period of time, she read a lot of agricultural books, and combined with the knowledge she had learned in her previous life, she wrote down the breeding mode of mulberry fish ponds and several rouge water powder prescriptions for Cixi's health care and skin care. She only said yes to Fuling and the others. What I saw in ancient books before is that the Li family has been scholarly for generations and has a huge collection of books. Mei Xiang and the others have no doubts after hearing it.

Li Wan sent Fuling's father, Liu Youfu, to the south to buy land this time to prepare for it. When the Zhuangzi is built, these can be handed over to the people in the Zhuangzi to try it out.

After reading and practicing calligraphy for a while, it was dinner time in a blink of an eye.

Li Wan changed his clothes and went to the room to greet Jia Mu. When he reached the door, he heard a burst of laughter inside.

The girl drew up the curtain, Li Wan went in, and saw Yingchun sitting on the kang teaching Tanchun to tie the net. Xichun was young and seemed a little sleepy, sleeping in the nurse's arms.

Baoyu and a little girl with pink make-up and jade carvings sat aside to relieve Jiu Lianhuan.

This little girl is about three or four

At the young age, he was wearing a scarlet flowered jacket, pine flower cotton trousers, and a red gold unicorn around his neck. Because of his young age, he had not yet grown his head, and his big round eyes made him look more lively and lovely. It was Xiangyun, the daughter of Shi Hou's family.

Li Wan greeted Jia Mu, smiled slightly and said, "Sister Yun is here, the old lady was still talking about it yesterday."

Shi Xiangyun responded with a smile, said hello to Li Wan, then turned around and got together with Baoyu again.

The two little heads got together, chattering without knowing what to say, there seemed to be endless things to say.

Because of Jia's mother's love, Shi Xiangyun lived at Jia's mother for two hundred days a year. He and Baoyu ate at the same table and slept in one bed since childhood.

Seeing this, Jia's mother pointed to Xiangyun and said with a smile, "Do you think they look like twin brothers?"

Li Wan pursed his lips and smiled, and everyone looked at Baoyu and then at Shi Xiangyun, and couldn't help laughing: "It's really very similar."

Looking at the two little ones in front of her, Mother Jia thought of Jiangnan's daughter again, wondering if Min'er had received that letter.

In mid-February, Lin Ruhai's family arrived in Yangzhou.

As soon as he took office, Lin Ruhai began to communicate with his predecessor, checking all the accounts. Officials from Huaiyang, as well as local salt merchants of all sizes came to visit him.

While Jia Min led the maids and women to clean up the house and set up the utensils, he greeted the orders of all the visitors, but Daiyu was a little unaccustomed and asked the doctor to take care of it carefully. She was so busy that she didn't even have time to catch her breath.

By the end of February, everything was in order, and the salt administration was handed over, and Lin Ruhai officially took over the salt department.

Coincidentally, the seventh day of March is Jia Min's birthday, and I didn't want to make a big deal, but from the fourth day of the lunar new year, salt merchants of all sizes in Huaiyang began to send people to give gifts to congratulate.

Salt merchants in Lianghuai and Huaihe Rivers are famous for their wealth all over the world. There are many people with millions of wealth, and there are also many rich people with tens of millions. The Xunyan Yushi is in charge of salt transportation. It was Lin Ruhai's first birthday after taking office, so the presents were very expensive.

These salt merchants competed very much, this one gave white jade watermelon, that one gave gemstone bonsai, and the others also rushed over each other, lest the gifts be too thin and they would lose face in front of the new censor.

It took Jia Min a long time to cook these things every day.

By the sixth day of March, the congratulatory gifts sent to the Lin family had piled up into mountains.

The ground is full of silk and satin, antique decorations, and all kinds of gold, pearls, jade, and other rare ancient books, calligraphy and painting curiosities.

Wait, there are countless.

The table is full of various brocade boxes and wooden boxes, which contain all kinds of jewelry, jade, and head jewelry.

One of the white jade trays contained more than a dozen pouch sachets woven with gold and silver threads. Daiyu picked up a sachet inlaid with gold and silver threads and embedded pearls. After a closer look, she couldn't help frowning slightly, and said: "The sachet purse is the first thing to focus on embroidery patterns and color matching. Why do you make it so fancy with gold inlays and treasures? It's putting the cart before the horse."

Any girl from a rich family will start to learn how to socialize, housekeeper, etc. from the age of five or six.

Daiyu is already five years old, so during this period of time, Jia Min will take her by the side when dealing with things, and start teaching her some housekeeping skills.

Jia Min glanced at it, shook her head and said, "It's too extravagant."

He casually opened a box next to it, but it was full of pearls, crystal clear and round, all about the size of a little finger, emitting a faint halo in the sunlight.

He opened two more brocade boxes, one containing a set of extremely delicate and unique gilt heads with emerald emeralds inlaid with red treasures, and the other a pair of Shuanglong Zhuangzhu white jade bracelets carved from top-quality mutton fat white jade.

Even though Jia Min was well-informed, he felt a little headache looking at the things in front of him. Looking at Lin Ruhai, he hesitated and said, "My lord, this is too expensive. How should we deal with it?"

Lin Ruhai smiled slightly, and said: "It is said that the Lianghuai salt merchants are the most wealthy in the world. I saw them today and they really deserve their reputation. Let's accept them. If we don't accept them, we will have to worry about it."

The Lin family is not short of money, but there is a set of unspoken rules in the officialdom. Bingjing, Tanjing, three festivals and two longevity, these are all legal incomes that are tacitly approved by the top.

The Lin family is rich, and Lin Ruhai is not greedy for this little money, but acting too high-minded in the officialdom will make him a different kind.

Therefore, he did not decline these things politely, and accepted them with the crowd, but he would never accept other money that should not be taken, so he has a very good official reputation since he became an official.

It was the same this time, even if he didn't want to accept the gifts, he couldn't refuse them, otherwise the salt merchants would think that he was dissatisfied and wanted more.

Therefore, Jia Min accepted all the congratulatory gifts that came, but made a separate booklet, and then donated clothes, food, rice, noodles, and charcoal to the Young Children's Hall and Nursing Home every month in the name of Daiyu's blessing.

This is a later story, so I won't mention it for the time being.

After working like this for several days, it finally stopped.

One day, when Lin Ruhai came back from the Yamen, it was already time to light the lamps. When he returned to the bedroom, he saw that Jia Min had already removed her make-up and undressed. At this time, she was sitting in front of the window with a pair of small scissors cutting candles.

I saw her eyebrows drooping slightly, a strand of black hair lightly scattered in front of her chest, under the candlelight, her skin was as creamy as fat, and her eyebrows were picturesque.

Looking at a beauty under the lamp, the more beautiful you look, not to mention that Jia Min is already extremely beautiful, and her exquisite eyebrows are set off by the orange candlelight, which makes people unable to move their eyes away.

Lin Ruhai couldn't help but think of the scene when he was newly married, and was slightly absent-minded.

Jia Min put down the small scissors, looked up and saw Lin Ruhai, and couldn't help saying angrily, "When did the master come back, why didn't he make a sound?"