“Well….”
“Patriarch, did I say anything wrong? Doyou mean that our daughters should be someone else’s maid for the rest of theirlives? Of course they will come home and get married when they reached theright age. It’s not like we are selling our daughters to the Cheng’s. Now XiaoXiao is just trying to bully us!”
An Hung niang interrupted the old patriarch and complained disgruntledly.The other villagers looked at each other. n.o.body was really familiar with howthis was supposed to work exactly, but they have somewhat heard about it in thepast that when a poor peasant enter to work for a big family, it was more orless like signing their freedom over for the rest of their lives.
Shi daniang stood up slowly with an embarra.s.sed look. She looked at the Cheng’sfather and daughter then lightly to the old patriarch, “Old patriarch, we knowthat things are different when working for a big family, but the Cheng’s arepart of this villager after all. We want meant is for our second daughter towork there for the time being until she reached the age of marriage. We wouldlike to find her a good family. They shouldn’t not be allowed to get marriedjust because of their work. Am I right?”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean, oldpatriarch. No matter what we should let our kids marry. Why do they have to saythey are raising our children for us. Our daughters will be helping out.There’s no need to make it sound so bad!”
Listening to their words, a few othervillage women nodded as well. It was obvious that that’s what they had in mindas well.
What they said sounded reasonable, nowit started to sound like the Cheng’s were taking advantage of them. The oldpatriarch wasn’t sure what to say, so he just looked at Cheng Xiao Xiao.
Cheng Biyuan didn’t look too happyeither but he didn’t say anyway. He has already decided to let his daughterhandle this one.
Cheng Xiao Xiao was already familiarwith the village women’s thought process from a couple of days ago. She had anidea that this would be bought up again. The old patriarch looked at her casuallook at her young age and couldn’t help but looked at her approvingly.
Cheng Xiao Xiao turned to the villagewomen again and said nonchalantly, “Everybody has their own ideas. I can acceptyour terms but I have my own conditions as well. As long as you can accept myconditions as well, we will take in all your girls as well. Otherwise, I amsorry we won’t be able to do that.”
“What conditions?” An Hung niang was always the most impatient one!
“I don’t have a lot of conditions. Dolisten carefully. One, your daughters will be separated from our family at age14 and each family are free to arrange for their marriage!”
“Good! No problem!” An Hung niang was ecstatic!
The other village women started smilingtoo.
Cheng Xiao Xiao continued to talk, “Two,we will provide all the food and clothing for the girls working for us. b.u.t.they cannot take a grain of rice or a head of lettuce that belongs to theCheng’s. If they take anything of course, they will be treated as thieves. Theywill either be taken to the court or be punished at and banished from theCheng’s and their employment will be terminated!”
“……”
“Three, the girls that work for us mustfollow our orders. They cannot pick and choose what they want to do or not wantto do. They must carry out all orders. If they are lazy or disobedient, theywill be banished from the Cheng’s!
“Four, and the most important one. Nomatter what they have heard or learned during their stay with the Cheng’s, theywill not be allowed to divulge any of it to anyone outside of the Cheng’s, noteven to their own families. If we discovered this situation, their employmentwill also be terminated!”
“Please do give this some carefulconsiderations. That is all I have to say. If you feel that your daughters areup for this, we will accept them. If you don’t think so, well then, havesomeone else raise your children for you. We don’t accept this task!”
After listening to herwords, everybody presence knew that what Cheng Xiao Xiao had asked for was notunreasonable, even expected. If they couldn’t even agree to these terms, it’snot unusual for the daughters to be denied.
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