Yingbao didn't know that her two younger brothers were so worried about her marriage that they couldn't eat or sleep.
Since that day's dinner party, the two younger brothers seemed to have grown up suddenly, and their words and actions became much calmer.
Afterwards, Jiang Wu and Hu Zi's appointment letters also came down. Hu Zi was appointed as the cavalry captain of the capital's imperial guards, a sixth-rank military position.
Jiang Wu was appointed as the commander of the militia in Yuzhou, a fifth-rank official. He would go to Bianliang to take up his post after the new year.
Chunniang and Yingbao were both happy and a little worried.
After all, Jiang Wu is still young, he is only fifteen years old after the Chinese New Year, and he has to travel thousands of miles away, and he won't be able to go home for at least several years.
Yingbao: "Mom, why don't we arrange a marriage for Xiaowu first? He's going so far away, he needs someone considerate to take care of him."
Chunniang sighed, "How can I find someone I like in such a short time? Oh, it would be great if your father were here."
Yingbao frowned and thought for a while, "How about I go to Bianliang with Xiaowu?"
The capital city was very boring, and the Xiao family and Chen Tiantian were annoying. He couldn't kill them immediately, so he simply went away.
Anyway, my mother has Jiang Jie to take care of her, and Mr. Wu and his family are there to look after her. I can then ask the emperor for an order to allow my father to come to Beijing to live as well.
When the time comes, we can bring our grandparents and my second uncle's family over. The Jiang family has the Four Seasons Potted Plant Shop, so even if the family is not rich, they will definitely not have to worry about food and drink.
Chunniang shook her head: "No, you just stay at home with your mother." The daughter is already a grown-up girl, how can she walk around randomly
Seeing that her mother was firmly opposed, Yingbao stopped talking. After thinking for a while, she suddenly remembered Jiang Jie: "Mom, we should ask a matchmaker to go over to the Luo family to talk about the matchmaking."
Although it was the Luo family who first chose Jiang Jie as their son-in-law, they could not be impolite. As long as Jiang Jie had no objection, they would quickly settle the marriage.
Chun Niang nodded: "I asked Madam Wu to help find a matchmaker a few days ago, but recently everyone is busy worshipping their ancestors, so Madam Wu asked us to wait a while."
Ying Bao was relieved. "I still have a lot of silk and satin. Let's go to the jewelry store and order some head ornaments and jade. We should also buy some jade. If a matchmaker comes, we will have a decent betrothal gift."
Chunniang: "Then let's go to the market tomorrow. It's almost the end of the year, so we need to prepare some cloth to make new clothes for the servants at home."
"Well, we have to prepare new clothes for Xiaowu and Huzi." Yingbao wanted to buy more new fabrics and ask the embroiderer to make a few more robes of better styles for her two younger brothers and Huzi Jiang Quan.
They often go out, so the accessories they wear must be exquisite.
The next day, Yingbao and Chunniang took a maid to the market in the family carriage.
She first went to a jewelry shop and ordered six sets of gold-inlaid headpieces, two gold necklaces, several pairs of jade bracelets, several pairs of gold bracelets, jade hairpins, Huasheng ivory combs, etc. She also ordered several sets of leather belts and seven things for men, and asked the shop owner to send them to the Jiang family in Meihuafang.
Afterwards, he went to a silk shop and ordered dozens of rolls of silk and satin, as well as cotton and linen fabrics for the servants to wear.
He also asked the silk shop to introduce several embroiderers and sent them to Jiang's house.
Then he went to the shoe shop and bought several pairs of shoes, leather boots and cotton boots for his younger brother and cousins, and a pair of cotton shoes for each of the servants and maids.
The deposit alone cost several hundred taels of silver, which made Chunniang very distressed. She kept asking her daughter, "Do we have enough money?"
For these things, you just need to pay first, and then have the store deliver the goods to the Jiang family, and then pay the remaining balance.
"Don't worry, mom. It's enough." Yingbao and her second cousin earned several thousand taels of silver from the four-season potted plant garden in just over two months. Excluding the money for the flower pots and seedlings, as well as the money for building the greenhouse and purchasing the shop, the net profit was more than two thousand taels.
Even after sharing the money with her second cousin, she would still get more than a thousand, which was more than enough to cover today's expenses.
Chunniang couldn't feel at ease, but she also knew that the money had to be spent.
Not only that, but we also have to prepare New Year gifts and distribute them to relatives, friends, and Jiang Jie's colleagues.
Although people will give gifts in return, what they give back are gifts, not money, and you can never get back what you spend.
Therefore, it is not easy to be an official in Beijing. The salary of his son seems to be a lot, but he has to support a large family and deal with personal relationships. Without some extra income, he would not be able to make ends meet.
Fortunately, the little girl did some business with her second cousin, otherwise the family would not even be able to afford a servant.
After shopping, I went to the rice shop to buy grain and salt, some spices, and several jars of soybean paste and rice vinegar.
Chunniang saw that the soybean paste in the capital cost dozens of coins per pound, and she couldn't help but mutter, "If I had known, we would have dried a few jars at home. This is too expensive."
Yingbao also thought it was expensive. A copper spoon cost more than a hundred coins. It was not worth it. "We will dry it ourselves next summer."
Cooking at home is inseparable from soybean paste seasoning. Their family, including servants, has about 20 people, and they need several spoonfuls of soybean paste a day, not to mention daily food such as rice, flour, oil, chicken, duck, fish and meat.
Yingbao roughly calculated that her whole family spent about ten taels a day, which was three hundred taels a month.
This is just the cost of food. If you add in the gifts and reciprocity, and the servants' monthly wages, it would be impossible to make ends meet without five hundred taels.
The mother and daughter finally finished shopping and took a carriage home.
After a while, all the shops delivered their goods.
Yingbao checked them once and selected a few boxes of pearl flowers from other samples sent by the store before paying the full amount.
All the valuable jewelry and cloth were placed in Chunniang's room and locked in camphor wood boxes.
These are all prepared as betrothal gifts.
The rest was given to Wei Xiuxiu and several newly hired embroiderers, who were asked to make clothes for the masters of the family.
The servants were left to make their own clothes. Yingbao gave each servant cotton and cotton linen, enough for each of them to make two sets of clothes.
The clothes for the male servants and boyars were given to a few maids. Since there was no need for embroidery on their clothes anyway, the maids could finish them in two days if they worked together.
As for rice, flour, grains, oil, salt, sauces and so on, Yingbao put them in a separate room and let Mudan take charge of the key temporarily. He would keep account of how much people came to the kitchen to get.
After the Kitchen God Festival, two eunuchs suddenly came to the palace, saying that they were summoned by the emperor to come to the palace for an audience with him.
Yingbao remembered what her master Zhou Wuchang had said before, and asked the two eunuchs: "My master told me that if he summons me, there must be an imperial decree. Why don't you have one?"
The two eunuchs looked a little flustered, but soon calmed down and said, "Jiang Yingbao, do you want to disobey my order?"
Ying Bao looked at the two of them and said, "You'd better tell the truth. Whose orders did you follow? And why did you summon me to the palace? If you tell a lie, I will personally ask Master and punish you!"
One of the eunuchs frowned and said, "Jiang Yingbao, are you threatening our family?"
"Falsely conveying the imperial eunuch's order is an even more serious crime. Eunuch, you must know this, right?" Ying Bao was not afraid of these two eunuchs at all.
It's just the dog raised by Concubine Shu. Last time, it was also the two of them who lied and claimed to be following the emperor's orders. In fact, it was Concubine Shu who took advantage of her pregnancy to falsely convey the emperor's order.