A Lonesome Fragrance Waiting to be Appreciated 1

5

Pingting thought of how she was the most important maid at Gui Le's Jing-An Ducal Residence and how she was being sold like a complete nobody now. She shook her head and laughed bitterly.

No wonder people always say that life changes so quickly.

She stood on stage and studied her fellow girls, most of them now sold. The one who bought Qing was a painter and he looked very kind, very rich. Qing was quite noisy, yelling "Sis! Sis!" refusing to let go of Pingting's hand.

But Pingting knew that Qing, who came from a poor family, was actually very lucky to be sold into a nice family. Even her, if she hadn't been saved by her Master back then, she would've died of hunger long ago on the streets.

"Go, don't be scared." Pingting patted her hand, eyes following her as she left.

She was the last one to be sold.

Being ugly really put her at a disadvantage this time. The human traffickers tried to persuade the audience and finally sold her off to a housekeeper looking for an under servant, for forty cents.

If her Master knew that she'd been sold for forty cents, he would have died laughing.

She was then brought over to the well-decorated front door of a huge residence. "This is the main entrance, got that? You under servants should be using the side door though." The housekeeper pointed at a sign overhead.

Pingting looked up and read the big characters on the sign, "Hua Residence".

Luckily it wasn't the Zhen-Bei Ducal Residence, or she would've tried to run.

The Duke of Zhen-Bei, Chu Beijie, was the famous younger brother of Dong Lin's king. He was the best military commander of Dong Lin — and one of the people who'd retreated in the last battle.

"Yeah, not bad, at least you can read." The Missus Hua nodded while taking Pingting to the so-called side door. "From now on, this is your new home. Master and his daughter are both very kind so if you do your work properly, you'll be treated very well."

Just like that, Hua Residence gained another normal maid.

Pingting's main role was laundry work. It was shocking to her that there'd be a day where she needed to wash so many clothes.

Back in Jing-An Ducal Residence, although her rank was a maid, she was like her Master's younger sister. She never did anything more than bringing tea or accompanying her Master while painting or play the qin. As for her own clothes, she had always given them to her maids to wash.

"Finally done." She took the painfully cleaned clothes and hung them up in the patio to dry. Pingting muttered, "Geez Pingting, don't you know that you shouldn't slack off with your daily duties? Now do you know what being a maid really means, right? This isn't the first time you've slacked off." She smiled, showing two dimples.

Her black eyes shone, revealing a hidden radiance that overwhelmed her surroundings. Although her looks were fairly plain, her expression had a sort of graceful youth about it.

If Fu Erge had seen Pingting just then, he'd totally regret selling her off for only forty cents.

The people of Hua Residence were kind to their workers. Mrs Hua noticed that Pingting coughed a lot and even bought her some medicine. Though it didn't exactly work, she did feel a little better after drinking some.

Pingting secretly waited for her recovery, but one small incident, ruined all her plans to escape.

The weather was relatively good, the sun was hidden behind the clouds and it wasn't as hot as the last two days.

Pingting had already finished washing the assigned clothes and was wiping the sweat from her face when Mother Chen approached her.

"Hong, are you busy?"

"I've just finished washing. What do you need, Mother Chen? I've done yesterday's washing too, except I still need to fold them..."

"Don't worry about that." Mother Chen followed Pingting to the washing line and chuckled, "You can put that down for now, I need to talk to you."

Pingting put down the bucket of washing, "Yes?"

"You fixed the two holes in my clothes, didn't you?"

"I saw them so I did do the mending. Is it no good?"

Mother Chen gave another chuckle, "It's not 'no good'. I could hardly tell that there was a hole there! I never guessed you had such nimble fingers!" She grabbed Pingting's hand, studied it and asked, "Why didn't you tell us about your skill? I'll tell you this, My Lady's wedding is coming up and we're in a rush to prepare the clothes. Only three girls in our entire Residence are proficient with needlework, so I'm worried we won't finish in time. From today on, you don't need to do manual work anymore, come and help sew!" She was Lady Hua's nurse, so she was extremely excited when it came to her wedding.