Farmhouse Green Plum

Chapter 574: The Handkerchief

Song Ying was also stunned. Her master had never told her that he would give her a name.

"Lingwei, Song Lingwei." She murmured softly, tears rolling down her face uncontrollably. This was a name full of the hopes of her elders, and now she had one.

Song Lingwei, very nice.

Doctor Lin was stunned for a moment and said helplessly, "Why are you still crying? You've completed your coming-of-age ceremony and are now an adult. You can't cry anymore."

Her voice was still hoarse, but it was so gentle that it startled the villagers who had previously been in awe of her majesty.

One cannot help but sigh that Song Ying had found a good master who not only taught her such great medical skills but also treated her so well.

Song Ying nodded vigorously, wiped her tears, and bowed to heaven and earth, ancestors, elders, and guests in turn.

After the ceremony, she stood up and helped Dr. Lin sit down, and together with Yang, she distributed cakes and poured sweet rice wine to the aunts and grannies who were watching the ceremony.

"Song Lingwei, what an elegant name! I really envy you for having such a master."

Luo Yanxing's envious voice came from the side, and Song Ying was astonished, "Why are you here? Aren't you also celebrating your marriage?"

"It's already over," Luo Yanxing complained. "What tricks can my mother come up with? She just asked me to change my clothes, comb my hair, put on some hairpins, and then pay my respects to my ancestors.

I heard your master has a lot of rules, so she left me and ran over to see what was going on."

Song Ying searched the crowd and found Wang, who was talking to Aunt Meihua and others. It seemed that they were asking her about a process that she had not seen before.

"Your coming-of-age ceremony is already very good. You are the only one in our village except Song Ying." Xiaoxiang's voice sounded behind her.

Song Ying turned her head and looked at Xiaoxiang past her, and said in surprise: "Xiaoxiang, you are here too!"

Xiaoxiang nodded and suddenly pulled out a brand new silk handkerchief. "By the way, this handkerchief is for you."

Song Ying took the handkerchief. A pink peach blossom was embroidered on the light red satin. The stitches were dense but irregular, and the pattern was simple. It looked very crude, not like something embroidered by a mature embroiderer, but it was quite beautiful.

She hesitated and said, "Did you embroider it?"

Xiaoxiang nodded shyly, "I want to embroider my dowry, so my mother went to the embroidery shop and found some unwanted patterns for me to embroider.

I pondered for a long time, but anything too complicated wasn't going to work, so I just sketched a few simple peach blossoms."

"Amazing!" Song Ying looked at her in amazement. "I've never learned anything, but you can embroider like this just by following the instructions. Xiaoxiang, you have a real talent for embroidery!"

Xiaoxiang was stunned. She had always been suppressed by her parents and she hadn't heard anyone praise her for a long time.

Luo Yanxing also nodded and took out his handkerchief. "The one you gave me is a wild goose flying in the clouds. It's embroidered very well. You can tell it's a wild goose at first glance, not a duck."

Song Ying turned her head and took a look, and was once again amazed at Xiaoxiang's embroidery talent. Peach blossoms are common, so it is naturally easier to embroider them, but in Jinchuan, wild geese are rarely seen, which means that Xiaoxiang basically embroidered them entirely based on the pattern.

Xiaoxiang was embarrassed by their praise, "Look at what you two said, if you follow the pattern, anyone can embroider like this."

"Who said that I can't?" Luo Yanxing immediately retorted.

"You can't sit still, but Song Ying can definitely do it." After a pause, she continued, "No, shouldn't peers call each other by their given names? They have to use their courtesy names. From now on, I should call you Lingwei."

Song Ying immediately laughed, "That's right. The purpose of choosing a name is to facilitate communication between peers. Scholars believe that calling someone by their given name is disrespectful to their elders."

Luo Yanxing clicked his tongue and said, "Oh my, the corners of your mouth are cracked like this, you must be very satisfied with this word."

"Of course not! My master came up with it," Song Ying said, shaking his head proudly. "It sounds so nice! And it has so much connotation!"

"You've reached adulthood. It's too unstable to keep shaking your head like that."

"Why don't you go out and ask around? Who wouldn't say that Doctor Song from Huichun Hall is steady and dignified?"

"Ouch, my tail is sticking up."

Watching the two of them bickering, Xiaoxiang pursed her lips and smiled. For a moment, she felt as if they had returned to the past, when good friends were joking and having fun with each other, and all those heavy and aggrieved things became light.

She said, "That's great, Song Lingwei. Your future life will surely be filled with wealth and prosperity."

Luo Yanxing glared at her, "Song Ying is rich and noble, isn't my name also scholarly, and sounds like a rich lady too?"

"No, I feel like Song Ying's name seems to foreshadow her life. 'Song Daya' was humble, so the name 'Song Ying' cut through that humbleness like a sharp sword, establishing her character. Now that she's happy, she needs to tone down her edge, and the gentleness of 'Ling Wei' comes to neutralize the sharpness of 'Ying'."

Luo Yanxing joked, "As expected of the daughter-in-law of a man who is about to become a juren, she speaks with such elegance and grace. She speaks so well."

Xiaoxiang pushed her angrily and said, "Go away."

"I won't leave." Luo Yanxing hugged her arm with one hand and held Song Ying with the other. "You two want to whisper behind my back? No way!"

Song Ying and Luo Yanxing's coming-of-age ceremony ended amid the lively atmosphere of the villagers. In the evening, they returned to the city in a carriage.

When Xiaoxiang's mother Zhang returned home, she sat on the long bench in the main hall with a dark face and said, "Kneel down."

A look of confusion flashed across Xiaoxiang's face, she had no idea what she had done wrong, but she still knelt down in silence.

"Well, you've even learned to steal. You twisted good silk into handkerchiefs. You haven't even become a young lady yet, but you're already acting like one?"

"I don't have any." Xiaoxiang explained timidly, "Didn't Song Ying and Yan Xing give me a Shu brocade purse before? I had to return the favor, so I cut a piece of the edge and made two handkerchiefs. It won't affect the making of clothes."

"This is silk. Do you know how much one piece costs? How much would it cost to buy back the length you cut? I was planning to use these two pieces of silk as a betrothal gift for your brother. If you cut a shorter length, how can I use it as a betrothal gift?"

Xiaoxiang felt like a needle was stabbing her heart. She suddenly remembered that year when Yan Xing scolded Ma Chun'er and Song Ying said that no matter how much dowry the Wang family gave her, she would not get it.

Now, she truly felt the bitterness of this sentence. The silk was a betrothal gift sent by the Gong family. Two pieces were red and two were black, which was said to symbolize the harmony of yin and yang.

She thought the red ones were for making clothes for her, but she didn't expect her mother didn't plan to use any of them for her.

She lowered her eyes, suppressed the bitterness in her heart, and said in a muffled voice: "It's just a little bit shorter, you can't see it."

"Is this a question of whether it's obvious or not? Weddings and funerals have their own etiquette. If you break the rules and ruin the good fortune, will your brother and sister-in-law's marriage go badly in the future? Will you be held responsible?"

Xiaoxiang pursed her lips, feeling a dull pain in her heart. She closed her eyes and comforted herself that her mother just valued her brother more and she still had her as a daughter in her heart, otherwise she would not have gone to so much trouble to arrange a marriage for her into the Gong family.