"Mr. Song Ya, here is forty-five taels of silver. Please count them. I will rent it for three months. By the way, if I want to renew the lease after three months, do I have priority?"
Jiang Miao came to the pawnshop with silver. Of course, the 45 taels were not all his savings. If he just opened a shop, the initial investment would be relatively large. If he took out all the money as rent, he would be hesitant to do business when the time comes.
"Priority?" Song Ya pondered the meaning of his words and guessed, "You mean, three months later, if you still want to rent it, I have to rent it to you first, right?"
"Yes, for businesses like us, we hate to move around. I don't want to wait three months to find out that the shop has been rented to someone else." Yesterday, he only thought that the shop was suitable. After asking if the layout inside could be remodeled, he forgot to ask about other things. No matter how good the business is, if a shop moves around, its customers will move away.
Song Ya thought for a moment and said, "As long as you want to continue renting, the owner will not disagree. But the owner of this shop has put up a sign. If someone buys the shop during this period, then after the lease period is up, it will be taken back."
This is indeed a problem. According to Jiang Miao's idea, he would rent the shop for a long time after making money, and buy it after saving enough money. However, no matter how good the idea is, it cannot stop people from selling the shop in the near future. Moreover, even if he rents the shop for a long time, one or two years, he probably won't make enough money to buy the shop. What if his business is booming and others are jealous and cut off his income
Seeing him hesitate, Song Yaren advised, "This shop is actually quite good, and the price is reasonable. If it wasn't a little small, it wouldn't have stayed here for so long. Yesterday I noticed that you kept looking at the empty space outside, so you must have had some thoughts in mind. Since you want it, why don't you just buy it?"
"Mr. Song Ya, do you think someone like me can afford more than one thousand taels of silver to buy a shop?" Jiang Miao said with a wry smile. He didn't know why Mr. Song Ya kept persuading him to buy a shop. Logically speaking, people in this business should have sharp eyes!
Song Yaren looked hesitant and said, "Brother Jiang, isn't this young man next to you your younger brother?"
Jiang Miao was stunned at first, then suddenly remembered the human trafficking in ancient times, and immediately pulled Pei Mu into his arms: "My brother won't sell."
Song Ya Ren laughed: "We are a house rental and sales broker, not a human trafficker. Besides, this young man is very valuable, who would dare to have any ideas about him? Since you are his brother, why do you have to use the excuse that you don't have money to evade me? You should know that the material of this young man's outer shirt alone is enough to pay the rent for several months."
After he finished speaking, he saw Jiang Miao looking at Pei Mu's clothes in shock, and he couldn't help but start to doubt the relationship between the two. Could it be that this Jiang Xiaoge was just his adopted brother? Or as the play said, this young master's family fell into poverty and he took refuge in someone else's house
No matter how smart the Song Ya people were, they could not have guessed that the two were brothers in name but uncle and sister-in-law in reality.
Jiang Miao thought for a while, then put the silver away and said to Song Ya Ren embarrassedly: "Song Ya Ren, I'm sorry to bother you today. I'll think about this matter again."
Song Yaren smiled and said, "It's okay, think it over carefully and come back to me." The most important thing for people in their line of work is patience.
Jiang Miao took Pei Mu back home, feeling a little down. It seems that acting on impulse is not feasible, and problems will come to you one after another.
Pei Mu was sitting on the side, looking at his appearance, pursed his lips, stood up and leaned over, supporting his knees with both hands, looking at him with his clear black and white eyes, as if asking him what was wrong.
"It's okay." Jiang Miao touched his head.
Pei Mu frowned, a little unhappy.
Jiang Miao smiled: "It's really nothing, I just think money is a really good thing."
Silver? Pei Mu's eyes lit up when he thought of the things in the cloth bag he had just seen. He pulled Jiang Miao to the bed, then climbed into the bed clumsily, lifted the quilt underneath, took out something, and handed it to Jiang Miao.
Silver? Jiang Miao was a little surprised. He looked at the silver and found the words "good luck and good fortune" engraved on it. Suddenly, he realized that this was the gift that Shopkeeper Wang gave to Xiao Shitou.
It turns out that Xiao Shitou's "little treasury" is hidden here! I don't know how Pei Mu found it. Jiang Miao smiled. He lifted the quilt underneath and found that in addition to the silver ingots that Mu'er had just taken out, there were also many copper coins underneath. Jiang Miao counted them and found that there were more than 200 of them. Xiao Shitou must have saved all his New Year's money and pocket money here.
He put the silver ingot back, re-padded the quilt and pretended that he had not noticed.
Pei Mu stared at him, his eyes full of confusion. Didn’t he want money
"This is Xiao Shitou's money. No one can touch it without permission. Do you understand?" Jiang Miao said.
Seeing that Pei Mu still didn't understand, he pointed at the little fish in Pei Mu's hand: "Just like your little fish, I will only touch it when you are willing to let me touch it. If you don't want to, no one can touch it, right?" He spoke slowly, and Pei Mu nodded. This time he understood, so he went over and patted the quilt, indicating that he would not touch anything here in the future.
"Good boy!" Jiang Miao praised him, "We should go pick up Little Stone."
Pei Mu nodded and followed Jiang Miao out.
When they arrived outside the school, Xiao Shitou just walked out. When he saw Jiang Miao and Pei Mu, he ran over excitedly, holding up a new brush in his hand, and said, "Brother, Xiao Mutou, look, this is a reward from the teacher! The teacher said that I have been memorizing the fastest every day recently!"
Jiang Miao was pleasantly surprised. He squatted down and praised, "Wow, that's amazing!" He took the brush and looked at it carefully. "Master Yu gave you a reward. Have you thanked him?"
"Yeah!" Little Stone nodded vigorously.
"So what are you going to do next?"
On the way home, Jiang Miao bought a piece of sweet cake for Xiao Shitou on this ground. Xiao Shitou took the cake, asked Jiang Miao first, then cut it in half and gave half to Pei Mu. Jiang Miao smiled, because he knew that Xiao Shitou would share it with Pei Mu. If he bought two pieces, they would eat them and they wouldn't have to eat when they got home later.
Pei Mu took the sweet cake and started eating, but his eyes were fixed on Xiao Shitou's new brush.
After dinner, Xiao Shitou sat in the study room and used his new brush to carefully copy the few sentences he had learned today. Jiang Miao was worried that the dim environment would affect his eyesight, so he always lit three or four candles to illuminate the whole room. Too many candles would burn if they were accidentally knocked over, so every time Xiao Shitou wrote, Jiang Miao would accompany him in the study room.
Pei Mu followed along every day, but while others wrote, he was focused on petting the cat. But today, Pei Mu's attention shifted away from the cat. He stood next to Xiao Shitou, staring at his every move, which made Xiao Shitou feel embarrassed.
Seeing this, Jiang Miao pulled Pei Mu to his side and asked in a low voice: "Little Wood, what's wrong?"
Pei Mu turned his head to look at the pen in Xiao Shitou's hand, then turned back to look at Jiang Miao, desire written in his eyes.
"Do you want to write too?" Jiang Miao guessed.
Pei Mu nodded.
Jiang Miao thought he wanted to play, so he went to the side and got some cut paper and spread them on the stool, then took a brush, dipped it in ink, and handed it to Pei Mu.
Pei Mu pursed her lips, put her hands behind her back, and refused to take it.
Well, he is not big, but he has a bad temper. Jiang Miao knew that he had seen through his perfunctory attitude, so he had to arrange the table at the other end like Little Stone did, and then carried him to sit on it.
"Is that all right?" This time, Pei Mu was willing to take the brush. He grabbed the brush and drew a few lines on the paper, then looked at Xiao Shitou, his face looking a little overwhelmed.
Jiang Miao stood behind him, holding his hand and placing the brush first, then taught Pei Mu to write stroke by stroke, following what Xiao Shitou wrote on the paper. His calligraphy was ugly, but Pei Mu couldn't tell the difference, only thinking it was quite similar to Xiao Shitou's. His mouth curved slightly, and he was happier than when Pei Che taught him to write.
In the Imperial College, Pei Che was also writing, his extremely neat and beautiful words seemed to fall on the paper as if they were engraved. After finishing his homework, he pulled out a letter from the bottom. This was the news from the person he arranged to be with Jiang Miao.
After unfolding the letter, the more he read, the tighter his brows furrowed. The letter said that Jiang Miao went to the pawn shop yesterday to look at the shop, but returned disappointed today because he did not have enough money on hand.
He had clearly told Jiang Miao that he could take whatever money he wanted from the Jiang residence, but it was only 1,400 taels. Why was it not enough? Could it be that someone was obstructing him and didn't take Jiang Miao seriously because he was not there? This was not impossible.
Thinking of this, Pei Che immediately wrote a letter, then walked out of the door and came to the foot of the wall. He looked around and saw that there was no one outside, so he jumped onto the wall and jumped out.
He whistled, and soon someone came over: "Sir, what do you want to talk to me about?"
"Send this letter to the steward Wu of the Jiang residence, and tell him to get the matter done tomorrow morning. And by the way, find out if there are any people in the Jiang residence who pretend to obey but actually disobey."
"Yes!" Seeing his stern expression, the subordinates did not dare to hesitate and agreed immediately.
The next morning, when Jiang Miao came back from sending Xiao Shitou, he saw a man standing outside the side door waiting.
The man heard the noise, turned around and came over to greet him: "Master Jiang, Young Master, you are finally back."
"Butler Wu?" Jiang Miao was a little surprised. "Why are you here? Is there something wrong?"
He opened the side door and invited Butler Wu in.
"This old servant has come to deliver something to Young Master Jiang. The Young Master sent an urgent letter last night, instructing me to get it done early in the morning." Butler Wu took out a piece of paper and handed it to Jiang Miao for review.
Jiang Miao opened it and saw the words "house deed" written on it. The location on the house deed was exactly the shop on Mingfeng Street.
"Pei Che sent you a message last night to do it?" Jiang Miao was a little surprised. "How did he know I wanted this shop?"
Butler Wu smiled mysteriously: "The prince and you are so close that he can naturally guess what you are thinking."
Jiang Miao chuckled. After Manager Wu left, he took the title deed and looked at it again and again. He felt a little unhappy. This feeling was completely different from the feeling he had when he received the Jiang residence before. He couldn't tell exactly what made him unhappy. He always felt that this would make him look greedy. Could it be that in Pei Che's eyes, no matter what he did, he was hinting at asking him for money
(End of this chapter)