The Lucky Farmgirl
Chapter 213 - 202: Hot Weather (Additional update for receiving 185,000 recommendation votes from Yunqi)

Chapter 213: Chapter 202: Hot Weather (Additional update for receiving 185,000 recommendation votes from Yunqi)

Manbao then began to roam around the village, realizing that she wasn’t very familiar with the children her age. When she ran over to them, they would see her from a distance and run away.

After wandering for a while, Manbao grew bored and simply ran back home to tidy up her Small book box. She said to Ms.Qian, "Mom, I’m off to school."

Ms.Qian nodded, "Go ahead, go ahead. Are you tired today?"

She was worried that her little girl was too tired from playing too much, which was why she had taken an extra day off. If Manbao wanted to go to school, she naturally supported her.

Manbao shook her head, "Not tired at all."

"Then off you go."

Manbao, carrying her Small book box, ran to the school and slipped in through the back door. The teacher standing on the podium saw her but pretended not to, though he was quite speechless about the children’s painfully obvious actions.

Why would you enter through the back door when you sit in the front row?

No sooner had Manbao entered than she realized this, but once inside, backing out was impossible.

So, with a red face and the book box on her back, she walked past rows of classmates towards the front.

Everyone looked at her in surprise. Well, rather than saying she "snuck" in, it was more like she made a grand, noisy entrance.

Hearing the commotion from behind, Mr. Zhuang, who pretended to have bad eyesight and turned his back to look for a book, turned around with resignation.

The teacher and student locked eyes, and Manbao flashed a pleasing smile, waving and saying, "Teacher, I’ve come back to class."

Mr. Zhuang glanced at the noisy, chattering students and nodded solemnly, "Get back to your seat, sit down, and open your books..."

Bai Shanbao made faces at Manbao. Why did you bother to come to school?

Manbao responded with a look: Because I’m bored.

Bai Shanbao expressed his pity; he had wanted to take another day off to sleep at home, but his grandmother wouldn’t allow it.

So, he made faces at Manbao and asked: Was the bride and groom fun?

He had really enjoyed the little games they played in the bridal room during the ruckus the night before.

Unfortunately, the message conveyed by his look was too complex for Manbao to understand, and since she saw the teacher glance their way, she stopped paying attention to him and instead opened her book to listen to the lesson attentively.

Bai Shanbao felt a tinge of regret. He was always restless, unable to sit still with questions pestering him as if his buttocks were on fire.

This caught Mr. Zhuang’s attention several times until, seeing that Bai Shanbao really couldn’t sit still, he called on him to read. After making him read the textbook twice to correct his phrasing and questioning him about the meanings, Bai Shanbao’s wandering mind finally settled down.

It wasn’t until the class was over that Bai Shanbao remembered the question he had wanted to ask earlier, "Was the bride and groom fun?"

"Yeah, fun. Weren’t you playing with us yesterday?"

"I meant today."

Manbao said, "There’s no wedding today. Ms.Fang is now my Fourth Uncle’s wife."

"Is it not fun without a wedding?" Bai Shanbao tilted his head. "Your family has one more person at least, don’t you feel any difference?"

Manbao thought for a moment and said, "I don’t feel any different; I just don’t know how good the Fourth Uncle’s cooking is. I hope she’s as good as my eldest sister-in-law, so every time it’s her turn, I can eat something delicious."

Bai Shanbao, from a family of three, couldn’t understand this at all.

But Ms. Fang’s arrival didn’t have much of an impact on the Zhou family’s children. The Zhou Family had many members, and the kids still had to complete their tasks every day, playing with whatever time they had left.

If there was any major impact, it was that Fourth Uncle, who previously loved taking them up trees for bird eggs and into the river to catch fish, suddenly wasn’t joining them as often.

Call him ten times, and he’d only agree to join them twice.

So, that was quite regrettable.

When Ms.Fang first joined the family, Ms.Qian didn’t immediately assign her duties and let her assist Junior Ms.Qian instead. After watching for a few days and seeing that Fang was getting used to the household chores, Ms.Qian integrated her into the routine. From now on, the duties shared by Junior Ms.Qian would be even lighter and less frequent.

That’s the benefit of having more people: even Junior Ms.Qian secretly hoped that Five would marry soon. Then they could split into two groups for the chores, leaving them with even more free time.

With extra free time, Ms.He began focusing on the uncultivated land, leading a group of children to clear the weeds and add another layer of fertilizer.

Junior Ms.Qian had asked her sisters, ultimately pulling Ms.Feng into making tofu together.

Of course, the reason she involved Ms.Feng was that the tofu had to be sold by Zhou ErLang, and the money earned was split equally between the two households after contributing to the public funds.

Because the heavy tasks like grinding beans and fetching water were done by Zhou Dalang, and when it came to making tofu, Junior Ms.Qian was the lead while Ms.Feng assisted.

It couldn’t be helped, even though the method was the same, if Ms.Feng pointed at the tofu, the taste would be somewhat different.

It was strange, wasn’t it? The same technique, but somehow different.

The tofu sold surprisingly well in the county town, and whatever Zhou Er brought, he could sell out, which also improved his bamboo-weaving business.

But this situation lasted only until mid-May.

After the Dragon Boat Festival, the sun blazed relentlessly, and it was intolerably hot. Every day when Manbao returned from school, her clothes would be half soaked, showing just how high the temperature was.

Ten consecutive days of high heat worried Zhou Dalang about the fields drying up and damaging the rice, but Old Zhou was more concerned about a possible downpour.

Some of the village elders gathered together, squinting at the clouds and the sun every day, causing Manbao, who was coming home from school, to look up as well.

In the end, no matter how hard she stared, she couldn’t figure anything out.

She humbly asked her father, "Dad, what are you looking at?"

Old Zhou shifted his gaze from the sky and said, "The clouds."

Manbao looked up again and said, "The clouds now are not as nice as the ones I saw before."

Old Zhou’s brow furrowed with worry as he asked a fellow elder, "Does this weather mean a heavy rain is coming?"

"That’s the thought, but who knows if it will rain," said the elder, who was slightly older than Old Zhou, sitting on a stone beneath a tree, "Four or five days ago, they said it would rain heavily, given the mugginess, but it didn’t. These past days have become progressively more stifling; we’ve seen the dark clouds drift over, but then they get blown away by the wind. So, we’ll wait and see."

Old Zhou became a little anxious, "Maybe we should clear up the ditches near Little Bay first."

"Tell the village head if you think so. Who’s willing to pick up a hoe and dig ditches in this heat?"

Old Zhou was generally averse to taking the lead. After a brief silence, and a glance at his daughter’s shimmering, curious eyes, he hesitated but went to talk to the village head anyway.

However, just as the older fellow had said, with the weather being too hot and the water level in the river not extremely high, the village’s able-bodied men were reluctant to clear the ditches.

In such weather, they were already reluctant to draw water from the ditches to their own fields, let alone letting their field water run off into the ditches. What were they thinking?

Yet, the unexpected happened without warning.

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