The Lucky Farmgirl
Chapter 372 - 361: We Must Have Dreams (Part 2)

Chapter 372: Chapter 361: We Must Have Dreams (Part 2)

Manbao didn’t eat the steamed bun anymore and stuffed it to Zhou Wulang, who was squatting to the side watching the excitement. Then she pinched a lock of the long-worker’s hair with her fingers and asked, "Look, how long has it been since you last washed your hair?"

The long-worker thought for a moment and then shook his head, "I can’t remember."

It had been too long, and who would keep track of something like that?

Manbao withdrew her hand, looked at the three of them, and shook her head with a sigh, "I’m seven years old, and I definitely wouldn’t want to get close to you if I saw you on the street. Do you think seventeen-year-old young misses or twenty-seven-year-old older sisters would want to get close to you?"

The three men hesitated for a moment, then shook their heads.

"Then how are you going to find wives to marry?"

The men fell into thought.

The long-worker hesitated, "Even if we cleaned ourselves up, no one would marry us, right? We don’t have any land or a house."

"That’s right, we would be following us to drink the northwest wind."

Manbao was indignant, "You guys lack ambition!"

Bai Erlang had come over with Bai Shanbao to watch the spectacle for a while, and upon hearing this, he said, "What’s there to be scared of? My family has plenty of land and houses, and later I’ll ask my father to give some to you."

The three long-workers looked up at Bai Erlang in unison.

The steamed bun in Zhou Wulang’s hand almost dropped from surprise.

Bai Shanbao rolled his eyes at him and said, "A man with ambition should earn his own property and marry a wife. What does it look like to rely on others?"

The three long-workers weakly said, "We lack ambition..."

Manbao sighed and said, "We still need to have dreams. Even though you don’t have land or houses, if you have skills and ambition, you can still find wives. But if you don’t have ambition or skills, then you really won’t be able to get married."

The three long-workers lapsed into silence, silently nibbling on the last steamed bun, and the atmosphere sank into a lull.

Manbao’s eyes were bright as she stared at them, "Really, you don’t consider cleaning yourselves up and working hard to get a wife?"

The long-worker said, "With three hundred copper coins a month, even if we don’t spend a single coin, we still can’t save much in a year."

"You could save three thousand six hundred copper coins."

The three long-workers gaped in amazement, "We could save that much?"

"How is that possible? Does that mean I’ve spent three thousand six hundred copper coins in a year?"

Now it was the children’s turn to be confused, "Three hundred coins a month, isn’t it three thousand six hundred coins in a year? It’s easy to calculate."

But the three long-workers, who couldn’t even count to a hundred, failed to do the math. After Manbao did the calculations for them, they all started feeling the pain, "Have we really spent that much money? What about four years?"

"Four years is fourteen thousand four hundred copper coins."

The longest-serving long-worker, who had been there for exactly four years, heard Manbao’s words and rolled off the stone with a thud, then started wiping away tears and crying, "I, I’ve actually earned so much money, how did I not know that, wuu wuu wuu..."

Children: ...

Zhou Wulang quickly finished the steamed bun Manbao had given him, patted his bottom as he got up, and sighed, "Thank goodness I learned arithmetic from Manbao."

Zhou Silang, not knowing when he arrived, heard this and curled his lip, "Even if you can’t do sums, you can still save money. There’s no need to spend all of your monthly earnings."

The second long-worker said indignantly, "What do you know? We don’t have land. We don’t have a mother or a wife. When we do heavy labor and get hungry, don’t we need to eat more? The cloth we’re given, don’t we have to pay someone to sew it? And then there are shoes, socks; those also cost money to buy..."

Zhou Silang spat, "It’s just laziness. Why make so many excuses? Is sewing clothes that hard? I can sew. Are shoes and socks that hard to make? I can make them!"

Manbao and Zhou Wulang beside him nodded in agreement.

Despite having Ms.Qian around, before Zhou Xi returned to her parent’s home, she couldn’t take care of every child all the time.

Since Manbao had Junior Ms.Qian looking after her, Zhou Silang, Zhou Wulang, and Zhou Liulang had it harder. Ms.Qian would make their clothes and occasionally, if she got really sick, she would have her three daughters-in-law do it.

But there were always occasions when things were overlooked, especially when clothes were damaged.

Zhou Wulang and Zhou Liulang were younger in the preceding years, so Ms.Feng and Ms.He didn’t mind mending for them, but Zhou Silang was older, and primarily, Zhou Silang himself felt awkward asking his sisters-in-law to mend his clothes.

So, he self-taught the mending, even if it looked a bit ugly at the start.

Latterly, when Zhou Wulang’s and Zhou Liulang’s clothes ripped again, they were too lazy to bother their sisters-in-law. They either stuffed them to Zhou Silang or picked up the needle and thread themselves.

The more they mended, the better the results naturally looked.

Then they started mending socks themselves, and eventually their shoes as well.

Mending = sewing!

The Zhou brothers looked proudly at the three long-workers.

The three men were stunned and looked at the Zhou brothers with doubt, "Don’t you have a mother and sisters-in-law at home? Why do you have to do things like that?"

Zhou Wulang looked down on them and said, "If you can do things for yourself, you should. It’s always more comfortable doing your own things. Have you really never learned to make your own clothes and shoes after all this time alone?"

The three long-workers fell into contemplation.

Manbao shook her head as she looked at them, "You are too lazy, that’s not good."

The second long-worker thought about it, "But even if we can save our wages, without a house or land, no one would be willing to marry us, would they?"

Zhou Wulang couldn’t hold back, "We don’t know about that, but if you have neither money nor hard-working spirit, then certainly no one will be willing to marry you. I’ve been saving for a marriage since two years ago. You’re all so old and haven’t even started saving yet."

Zhou Wulang thought for a moment, and then said somewhat tactfully, "Anyway, you definitely can’t compete with me if you’re looking to get married in the next couple of years."

The third long-worker’s eyes widened, "Doesn’t your family give money for you to get married? You even have to save up yourself?"

The teary long-worker had stopped crying and climbed up, looking curiously at Zhou Wulang.

Zhou Wulang glanced at his older brother before proudly sticking out his chest, "Money given from the family is nothing compared to the satisfaction of saving up yourself to marry a wife."

This was obviously far beyond the three long-workers’ common knowledge, shaking the beliefs they had always held dear.

Did they want to marry wives?

Of course they did; there wasn’t a man in the world who didn’t want to marry a wife.

But ever since they had lost their land and were forced to work as long-workers, they had little hope of getting married.

Who becomes a long-worker?

It’s those whose families don’t have land, or the land is too scant to feed everyone, so they have to work as farm laborers elsewhere to make a living.

They considered themselves fortunate to have found a decent master who didn’t withhold their wages and had a long-term contract.

Some had to settle for temporary work, moving from place to place once a job finished, continuously in search of more work.

With bad luck, they might run out of money without finding the next job, ending up as beggars while still searching for work.

In their minds, the money for marrying a wife should come from their parents, right?

But they had left their hometowns; how could they still hope for their parents to pay for their marriage?

Now it seemed from Zhou Wulang’s implication that it’s normal to save up yourself to marry a wife?