CH 25

Chapter 25 – Repeat customers

A horse carriage stopped near them, the curtains opened, and a little girl looked out of the window. Soon after, a servant came over and asked, “How much is a flower basket?”

Man Bao said, “Five wen for a basket which includes a sweet.”

This wasn’t expensive. The servant didn’t bargain, and she pointed to a flower basket decorated with predominantly purple flowers, which was sitting amongst a pile of flower baskets behind Man Bao.

“I want that one.”

Man Bao politely handed the flower basket over to her. After receiving the money, she said, “Come again!”

The servant thought Man Bao was funny and cute, and so, she relaxed her severe expression. Then, she returned to her mistress with the flower basket.

Her mistress was a little girl who was sitting in the carriage. The girl looked at the flower basket and felt that the basket was very beautiful.

She was happy for a while, and then, she saw something inside the basket. She took it out and looked at it.

Her servant advised, “Miss, the child said this is a sweet, but it’s best that we don’t eat these things…”

While she could finish, the little girl had unwrapped the greased paper and popped the sweet into her mouth.

As she tasted the sweet, her eyes widen slightly. The candy was sweet, even sweeter than honey.

Although it wasn’t as mellow and aromatic as honey, it was still delicious.

With the sweet in her mouth, the little girl looked at the flower basket, and asked, “How come there are no more sweets?”

The servant smiled and said, “The child said there is only one sweet in each flower basket.”

The little girl rolled her eyes and said, “This flower basket is very beautiful. Buy one for my brothers and sisters. Go and buy all the flower baskets.”

The servant was stunned, and said, “We don’t need so many baskets even if you want to give them to your uncle and the rest of the family members?”

“We definitely need all of them. We need to give to the paternal and maternal female cousins, maternal male cousins, and mother’s maternal family. I’m afraid there wouldn’t be enough baskets. Hurry up and go buy the baskets.”

She thought about it and was worried that her servant wouldn’t do her best, so she told the coachman to turn around and go back.

By then, Liu Lang had returned with the pack basket. His face was sweaty as he rushed back.

He squeezed past the surrounding children and put down the basket, “I told second brother our flower baskets are selling well, but he doesn’t believe me.”

Wu Lang whispered, “I also can’t believe it! We’ve sold more than half!”

The children brought a total of 51 bamboo baskets to town. Wu Lang made a mental note of each basket they sold.

By now, they had sold 27 flower baskets, and there were only 24 left. Wasn’t this surprising? Wasn’t this totally unexpected?

Wu Lang was ecstatic.

Liu Lang glanced at the onlookers and whispered, “Do you think we can sell the rest of them?”

All the curious children were currently squatting on the side of the street, watching Da Ya and Er Ya decorate the baskets. However, there were no buyers.

Wu Lang thought for a moment and said, “Don’t worry, if there are no buyers here, we’ll move to another place shortly. There are so many children in town. Someone will definitely buy them.”

Man Bao was more confident than them, and said solemnly, “There’ll definitely be buyers.”

The two brothers helped Da Ya and Er Ya to separate the flowers from the grass. Since they had seen their nieces at work many times, they were able to guess the number of flowers and grass required to decorate a flower basket. This enabled the two girls to work slightly faster.

Man Bao had already made friends with the children and were chattering away. She also wanted to find out if there were any rare flowers and plants nearby.

She wanted to get them for Keke, “There are so many beautiful, beautiful flowers on our mountain, do you have any flowers here?”

One of the children said, “We can’t go out, we’ll be taken away by the bad guys. So, I don’t know.”

Some of them had been to a mountain, but they couldn’t remember whether there were flowers, but they recalled there were fruits.

Fruits! Man Bao liked to eat fruits, so she quickly asked, “Are the fruits delicious?”

“Delicious, they’re sweet. My father picked them for me.”

Man Bao, “I want to eat the fruits. Tell me what it looks like, and I’ll look for it next time.”

“You wouldn’t be able to find it. Only my dad can find it.”

Man Bao was unhappy, “I’m also amazing. If your father can find it, so can I.”

“You’re too short. You definitely can’t find them.”

“Then I still have eldest brother, second elder brother, third elder brother, fourth elder brother, fifth elder brother and sixth elder brother. They’re tall and will help me find the fruits.”

All the children were stunned, and couldn’t help saying, “Do you have so many older brothers?”

Man Bao proudly replied, “Of course, I still have three nephews and three nieces.”

Everyone looked at Man Bao, who was obviously younger than them, and was slightly envious. She already has nephews and nieces, while they were just other people’s nephews and nieces.

There was a blast of wind, and the horse carriage was back. Man Bao recognized the carriage at first glance.

She remembered it clearly because when they saw the carriage earlier, Keke asked her to input the horse into the system as horses were extinct in the future. Horses were ranked highly, and as such, the reward points were exceptionally high.

However, when Man Bao was younger, she pulled out the vegetables from her neighbour’s garden. At that time, her mother taught her that she could only take things that belonged to her, as well as unowned items.

As for things which belonged to others, she could only take them if the owners offered the items to her. She cannot ask for them.

The horse obviously belonged to someone else, and she couldn’t steal it. So, Man Bao only allowed Keke to snap a photo. She promised him that if she had money in the future, she would buy him a horse so that they could enter it into the Encyclopaedia.

Naturally, Keke could only agree.

Man Bao felt it wouldn’t be a long day, because it was easy to make money. She patted the copper coins in her pocket and felt fully confident.

When she saw the servant who bought the flower basket from her earlier charging towards her, Man Bao asked, “Sister, do you want to buy more flower baskets?”

The servant’s child was older than Man Bao, and yet, Man Bao called her, sister. She didn’t feel slighted at all.

On the contrary, she was delighted, and smiled, “Yes, our lady said we want all your remaining flower baskets. How many do you have left?”

Man Bao was stunned. She turned around, looked at the flower baskets, and asked doubtfully, “Why does your lady want to buy so many? I want to sell it to more people?”

The servant frowned, “Anyway, we’ll pay you the full amount. How many do you have?”

Liu Lang thought Man Bao didn’t know, so he whispered in her ear, “There’re 24 left.”

Man Bao insisted, “It’s wasteful to buy things that you wouldn’t use. Can you use so many flower baskets?”

The servant took a good look at Man Bao. With a smile, she said, “We’ve many people in our family. Let alone 24, even if it’s doubled, we can still use all of them.”

Only then was Man Bao happy. She allowed the servant to look at the flower baskets her nieces were working on.

“There’re still 12 unfinished baskets. I hope you don’t mind waiting. We’ll get all the baskets done in a jiffy.”  

Once Da Ya and Er Ya heard all the flower baskets were sold, they became excited, and paid more attention to decorating the remaining bamboo baskets.

Man Bao stood up and had a chat with the servant, “Which are the prettiest colours and styles for the flower baskets?”

Keke said they should do a survey. In the future, they would make more flower baskets according to the results of the survey.

Since the servant had to wait, and since Man Bao behaved like an adult, she chatted with her, “Our lady thinks the purple flowers are pretty, but I think the red ones look better. Did you make the flower baskets yourself?”

“My father and second brother weaved the baskets while we decorated them.” Man Bao proudly said, “These are beautiful flowers from the mountain.”