Chapter Six, The Story of Poor Sisters (Part 2)
When Elizabeth. Bennett returned from shopping at the market in Meryton, a small town a mile away. He was struggling to push a small trolley filled with food and firewood. When he slowly walked into his yard, he saw Mary sticking out her butt. Lying on the ground in the yard, he kept touching around. Next to him was a pile of clothes and sheets of all kinds, which had rolled countless times in the dirt and dust. Spots of stains can be seen.
——Come on, I'm afraid today's clothes were washed again... Elizabeth. Bennett rolled his eyes helplessly, put down the car, rolled up his sleeves and came to Mary's side, "...Hey! What's wrong with you?"
Mary raised her head, revealing a pair of blank eyes with tears and a red and swollen forehead, "...Ah, I'm sorry, I originally wanted to dry my clothes, but I stumbled and couldn't find my glasses... …Please, can you help me look for it?”
——In general, the five Bennet sisters are all good girls with good health and good looks, and have no serious physical defects or genetic diseases. Only Mary, a reading aficionado, ruined her eyes by staying up late reading under candlelight because she read too many books, and the lighting conditions in this era were relatively poor... So, after time traveling, her soul age was seventy-five years old, and her body age was eighteen years old. The time-travel version of Mary has changed from presbyopia to severe myopia. Basically, as soon as she takes off her glasses, she can't see anything.
It just so happened that the glasses of this era, at least Mary. The myopia glasses that Bennet owns seem to be very different from modern glasses. They do not have two legs hooked on the ears, but only two round bottle bottoms, strung together with a metal hinge, and stuck directly on the bridge of the nose when in use. Also known as "pince-nez". The advantage of this kind of glasses is that they are compact, easy to fold, and look cute, but the disadvantage is that they fall off easily... Recently, Mary has lost or broken two pairs of glasses, and now she only has The last pair, no more spares.
So the two sisters had to look for glasses together. A few minutes later, there was a clicking sound on the soles of Mary's feet, and her last pair of glasses was no longer available.
"...Oh, no!" Touching her broken myopia glasses, Mary screamed in despair, almost tripping again because she couldn't see.
And Elizabeth's heart also twitched: now there is a semi-blind man in the family who can't do any work - in this era, of course it is impossible for a small village like Longbourn to have an optical shop, and the nearby Meili There are none in Tuncheng. If you want to get glasses, you have to go to London...
But she still had to comfort Mary a few words, helped her stumble up the stairs, and told Mary not to leave the bedroom without being seen. Then he returned to the yard and put the clothes and sheets that had fallen on the ground into a large tub, ready to be washed again in the afternoon. Finally, he pushed the cart filled with food and firewood again and walked around to the kitchen door in the backyard.
"...Kitty! Lydia! Everything is bought! Come over and help organize it!"
Then, from behind the kitchen door, two little faces covered with stove ash were revealed... Next, the three of them started working together to put together the refined flour, bacon, salted fish, sausages, etc. that Elizabeth had just bought from the town. Butter, potatoes, onions, salt, sugar and two large bundles of dry firewood were put into the kitchen in batches. Finally, Elizabeth looked up at the stove and found that the main dish for lunch today was a large pot of potatoes stewed with bacon, with some onions added. The staple food is gnocchi and pancakes... Although this meal seems very simple, if she were asked to cook it, she might not be able to cook it.
——For modern urban residents who have become accustomed to induction cookers, microwave ovens and gas stoves, using the kitchen stoves of the past to chop wood and make a fire is already a very unfamiliar thing. When Jane and Elizabeth stepped into the kitchen confidently for the first time, the end result was that they failed to light the fire for two hours, and in the third hour, the entire kitchen was filled with water. The black smoke looked like it was on fire...
After all, their cooking skills have long since degenerated into "microwave oven babies". They can only eat frozen dumplings and cannot make them at all.
Fortunately, among the five Bennet sisters, in addition to Jane and Elizabeth, two modern urban women, there are also three old ladies dressed in girlish skins. Relatively speaking, they still know some life experiences of backward times, so later on So they took over the kitchen job... However, even though they had experienced the relatively difficult planned economy era, because they had urban household registration, they only had experience in burning briquette stoves, let alone how to use tinder and flint. Ignition - The earliest friction matches were not invented until the early nineteenth century. Therefore, every time they cook is still an arduous battle. Just lighting the fire and blowing the wind almost makes them exhausted. The dishes can only be kept simple and do not dare to make them too complicated.
But even so, it was much more palatable than the "orthodox British dishes" they had enjoyed before - there was a joke on the Internet in later generations that said: One of the thinnest books in the world is about traditional British dishes. of recipes. If you were to make a book called "A Bite of Britain", fish and chips would be all you need. Although this statement is an exaggeration, British cooking is indeed very simple. Vegetables and fruits can be eaten raw without adding any condiments. Many hot dishes only require the raw materials to be cooked, and the required taste must still be required. Add your own seasonings.
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After washing her face and hands with Kitty and Lydia with water from the oak barrel, Elizabeth brought lunch to the table. And Jane, the eldest sister among the five. Bennett, also brought a check and a small bag of gold guineas (British gold coins, the legal face value is one guinea for one pound. But because this is a pure gold coin, beautifully made, it is very popular among people and has actual purchasing power. Always above the pound), back from town.
She had just sold the family carriage and all the horses at a low price through the commission of her uncle Philip, a solicitor who lived in Meryton.
——In the plot setting of "Pride and Prejudice", at least Jane and Elizabeth should be able to ride horses. Unfortunately, none of the five time-travel Bennet sisters know how to ride, so these delicate animals are all gone. Useful place. Moreover, the cost of raising horses is really high, and it is also very troublesome to take care of them. They have to be groomed carefully every day, and if you are not careful, you may lose weight or fall ill...
For Jane and Elizabeth, who could even feed cacti to death before traveling through time, serving them was truly an unbearable burden.
(When I watched "Broke Sisters", I felt very confused. The heroine was a waitress in a cheap restaurant in downtown New York. How could she still afford a horse? Just rely on half-price carrots in the supermarket? Or go to the park? Gnawing lawn? Does the screenwriter know how much a horse eats? )
"...A carriage and six horses were sold for only four hundred and five pounds in total? This price is really too little...but there is nothing we can do about it..."
Elizabeth recorded this income in the household book with a dipped ink pen, and then did a mental calculation, "... now we have a total of... five hundred and two pounds, fifteen shillings and eleven pence? It seems like a lot, but Maintaining a life for five people is still a bit tight..."
——Although the five sisters rummaged through the boxes at home and found more than four hundred pounds, they spent nearly three hundred pounds just to settle the wages when they dismissed the servants. Then the living expenses in the past two months were more than expected, so the money was not as useful as it seemed.
"...Hey, since we don't have enough money, we should find ways to make money?" As a former provincial model worker, the time-travel version of Lydia said without hesitation, "...Chairman Mao taught us to do it ourselves and have enough food and clothing. We How can someone with arms and legs starve to death?”
"...Making money? It's easy to say! Do you think this is our era?" Elizabeth rolled her eyes and knocked on the table, "...In today's era, what can you do? Tutoring or farming? What should I do about my dignity as a young lady? ”
——Mary, Kitty, and Lydia, these three old ladies dressed in girlish skins, two are retired Chinese teachers and one is a retired boiler worker. For the first two, do they need to teach Chinese in England at the end of the 18th century? Which British lady would be willing to learn Chinese these days? Besides, none of them can write traditional Chinese characters! As for the last one, the steam engine has just been invented these days, so where can she get the boiler to burn it?
In fact, just going out to work itself was considered a shameful act of self-degradation in the eyes of upper-class women of this era.
——The United Kingdom in the early days of the first industrial revolution was a reactionary country that retained a lot of the decadent traditions of the feudal aristocratic era. Its mainstream values were completely opposite to those of the socialist countries of the twentieth century. The whole society respected the belief that "getting something for nothing is the most glorious and glorious thing." The reactionary thought of "hands-on labor is the most shameful" and the money worship trend of money first, while also retaining deep-rooted discrimination and restraints against women.
In this era, if men want to revitalize their family business, they can invest in business, become pastors, lawyers, or join the army. However, the only decent way out for women is to marry a good husband. All women are taught to be humble and submissive from an early age, and young ladies are encouraged to learn to play the piano, sing, and dance just to join the upper class. The so-called girls' school is, to put it bluntly, nothing more than a bridal training class.
Most young ladies from the upper class are deliberately educated to be idle canaries who will starve to death once they are separated from the support of men. Therefore, the women of the upper class in England at that time were all clearly wealthy, but they still clung to their property and placed their entire lives on the pound. They were always used to measure it by the number of pounds. own happiness index. Because they can't do without luxurious and lively dances, and can't do without all kinds of fashionable and expensive clothes, shoes, and accessories, they have a natural fear of simple life. But they only know how to spend money and not make money, so the more money the better for them, and all their thoughts are focused on how to catch a rich man.
Besides, even if the five Bennet sisters mustered up the courage to go out to work regardless of their dignity, it would be difficult to obtain the expected minimum standard income.
"... Even if we ignore the looks of other villagers and relatives, what kind of jobs can we find when we go out? Female textile factory workers who work twelve to sixteen hours a day for only a few pence a day? Or that? A part-time barmaid? Or a maid who doesn't care about our housework? We can barely take care of ourselves, but can we still serve others?"
Elizabeth summed it up sharply, "...don't expect to earn a living by writing. According to the current market situation, even if an article is accepted, the manuscript fee is only a few shillings, and the postage, paper, pen and ink are not cheap. . If you encounter several rejections, you might even lose money.”
All in all, after discussion, the five sisters found that the safest life policy now is to sit back and wait for their inheritance.
To put it simply, they are continuing to live the life of a decadent exploiting class that gets nothing for their efforts... Although this kind of life is hard enough in their eyes, if the poor people in the slums of East London find out, they will definitely be slapped in the face: She has five hundred pounds in cash in her hand, and will inherit at least five thousand pounds in a few years. She can eat and drink without having to work to earn money. How dare such a rich and beautiful young lady say that she is poor? ! !
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Regrettably, the ever-changing fate seems not to let these five female time-travelers continue to live in such a lazy way.
——After lunch, just as Elizabeth and Jane were preparing to go upstairs to take a nap, and the three "little sisters" were drinking strange-smelling tea and basking in the sun in the yard, a certain servant who was busy with work suddenly I came to visit and delivered a letter from Meritun Town.
The person who wrote the letter was William. Collins, the cousin of the five Bennet sisters and the heir to the Bennet family estate in Longbourn Village.
The content of the letter was quite ordinary. As a relative and elder, he expressed his condolences to the five cousins of the Bennet family whose parents were missing and were left alone. He then stated that he was going to visit one day at the end of March and hoped that the cousins Be prepared for the reception and so on.
etc? Cousin Collins is coming to visit? There seems to be something wrong with this plot!
"...Oh God! Darcy and Bentley haven't appeared yet, why did Reverend Collins come first? This style of painting is obviously wrong!"
After being stunned for a moment, Miss Jian was the first to jump up, "...It is completely inconsistent with the plot of the novel "Pride and Prejudice"..."
"...Don't worry about the plot of the novel! My poor sister, the matter may be more serious than you think." After carefully considering the letter, Elizabeth suddenly changed her color in shock, "...Look at this letter carefully. Did he say that he received the priesthood and became a priest? ”
"...That seems to be true...It is also true that he came to Longbourn Village half a year earlier than in the novel. It is very likely that he has just graduated from the seminary and has not had time to become a priest. But there is another What's the problem?" Jane looked at the letter again and asked in confusion.
"...What's the problem? It's a big problem! This means that he will probably never go to be a priest elsewhere, but will never leave once he comes here!" Elizabeth raised her head and sighed, and at the same time stamped the floor under her feet, "...Don't forget, according to the law, this Mr. Collins is the heir here! As long as the inheritance procedures are completed, he can kick us out of this house whenever he likes!"
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