Crossing the Unknown Country

The old doctor smiled and said, "Young girl, you are very capable. I have a medical book here that I would like to lend you to copy, but the premise is that you have to copy it for me. I will provide the paper. Do you think it is okay?"

Su He's eyes lit up, and he immediately nodded and agreed with a smile: "Thank you, sir, we can pay the deposit for you."

The old doctor waved his hand and said, "No, I'll trust my own eyes for once. My last name is Jin, so just call me Doctor Jin from now on."

Su He came out happily with his father, carrying medical books and papers. The whole family gathered around and asked how it went. Su He's father said excitedly, "Let's go buy some things. We'll talk as we go."

On the way, Su He's father told them everything that had just happened. Su Feng and the others strongly requested to take a look at the medical book first. Su He's father had no choice but to take it out and let them all take a look, and then carefully put it in his arms. The four boys all wanted to copy a copy, but the paper was too expensive and they couldn't afford it!

Afterwards, Su He discussed with his brothers that they would have a competition to see who had the best handwriting and he would give him the book he was going to keep to copy. The four of them began to rub their hands and prepare to go back and compete. They must seize this opportunity, which was a rare opportunity to copy a book on paper.

Su He suddenly remembered and discussed with her parents about going to the library. Since her family had money, she could pay a deposit to get books and copy them, which would also earn her some money. Her father decided that she could give it a try, but if it didn't work, she could just give up.

Together they found the only bookstore in the town. Su He took the herbal medicine drawings he had drawn and went to the owner of the bookstore to see if he could get a job copying books.

When they went in and saw the young man, they asked, "Hello, is your master here?"

The clerk looked at them and saw that they didn't look like book buyers. However, they couldn't be too bad to be able to run a bookstore and work as a clerk here. The clerk concealed his emotions and asked them, "What do you want from our master?"

Su He asked her father to hand her painting to the clerk and said, "My family wants to be a copyist, see if there is any?"

The young man took it and looked at the picture and the words. He thought they were good, so he asked them to wait for a moment and went inside to look for the master.

After a while, a tall and thin man came out. He was about forty years old, with wise eyes and a gentle manner.

Si Siwen asked Su He's father: "Did you want to copy the book? Did you draw this?"

Su He's father smiled and said, "This was drawn by my daughter, but our children can all write, so you can ask them to write it for you."

The library owner narrowed his eyes and wondered what kind of family this was. Their children could write, and they didn’t look like rich people by the way they were dressed.

He smiled and said, "Is this the little girl? She is so good at painting at such a young age, it's amazing! You can invite the other young masters in the mansion to come to the backyard."

He brought the family to a stone table in the backyard, went into the house to get the pen, ink, paper and inkstone, and put them on the table. He asked the children to write two words for him to see. Starting with Su Pei, each child wrote a four-character idiom. Su Pei wrote "大鹏展翼", Su Che wrote "至高存远", Su Feng wrote "壮志凌云", Su Run wrote "日进斗金", and finally the bookstore owner asked Su He to write one, and she directly wrote "鸿雁之志".

The shopkeeper saw that the children could not only write, but also write these four-character words at will, which seemed to indicate that they had read some books. The shopkeeper was really wrong. They only had a book called Shuowenjiezi and two simple books. These words were sometimes told to them by the old man, and they wrote them down by themselves. He guessed that this was also a family with a story. This was a remote area of ​​the country, and there was no shortage of such families.

Finally, the shopkeeper took a deposit of 500 wen from their family and asked them to copy two books. If they copied well this time, they could copy three books next time. The Su He family came to the town this time and the business was done. They got the job of copying books, and the whole family was very happy. The shopkeeper sold them a set of pens and ink for 250 wen, and the original price should be 300 wen. The pens and ink were not included in the cost of copying books, and they had to pay for it themselves.

After leaving the bookstore, they went directly to the cloth shop to buy some black coarse cloth for the children to make clothes, and a piece of pink cotton cloth for Su He to make a top dress. They also went to buy a small can of oil and a large bag of salt, so that they could finally buy more. This time, they had money in their hands and could finally buy more oil and salt at will, without being stingy.