She must have been selling for about half an hour, and there were still many who came seeking her out by reputation, it’s just a pity that there were no more left.
Qin Xiangnuan thought about making more tomorrow, but she was too young and making too much would be too heavy for her to carry. No, she had to come up with a solution, as her opportunity to earn money was limited to these few days. Once Hu Li returned in a few days, it wouldn’t be so easy to make and sell cakes at home.
She packed up her things and headed back home the same way she came. The trip back took less time than the journey there because the box was heavy on her way to sell, and she had to stop frequently to rest. However, going back, she felt lighter and managed to reach home in less than half an hour. She stuffed the box and everything else into a cupboard then took out the small pouch where she kept her money, which she carried close to her body, hidden inside her cotton clothes.
She poured out all the money inside the pouch; it was mostly made up of ten-cent coins, with a few one-yuan bills.
She picked up a ten-cent coin, smoothed it out in her hand, and then took another, stacking and counting them one by one.
The total was 6.7 yuan, meaning she made sixty-seven cakes. She had an estimate of how much flour and oil she used.
The current price of flour was 0.168 yuan per pound.
For less than twenty cents per pound, she could make more than ten cakes. The green onions were grown at home, and bean oil cost 0.814 yuan per pound. Not even one yuan’s worth was needed for a batch of biscuits.
She sold each cake for ten cents, with the maximum cost being one cent, which meant she could earn nine cents in profit for each. Today, she made a net profit of six yuan. In ten days, wouldn’t that be sixty yuan? And in one month, she could earn over a hundred yuan. Nowadays, a worker’s salary was just twenty yuan per month.
If she made more tomorrow to sell, she might even make over ten yuan. In these few days, she could earn enough to cover her brother’s medical expenses and even save up some seed money. No matter what, they would be able to support themselves, which was undoubtedly better than life at the Qin Family.
She set aside the money along with the five yuan her brother had given her, then found a hidden spot to stash it. The place where she and her brother lived was so rundown that Hu Li despised it and would never come there.
She glanced at the time. In her room was her mother’s dowry, the only thing of value, an old clockwork watch. It ticked on day and night, never pausing for a minute unless it needed to be wound.
It was not even five o’clock yet, so she could get a few hours of sleep.
She pulled back the covers and lay down. Because she had found direction and goals in life, she unexpectedly slept very sweetly until daylight, and when she woke up, she was still very tired. Reluctantly, she crawled out from under the covers, got dressed, and ran to the kitchen to start a fire, cook rice, and then take it to the people working in the fields.
In the morning, she only made a simple meal of cornmeal lumps, adding some homemade pickled vegetables from a jar into a small bowl. Then she picked it up and carried it to the fields without much fuss.
Qin Guohua picked up a big bowl and began to eat without asking anyone else, while Qin Xiangyang handed the chopsticks to his sister, "Nuannuan, you eat first. Brother’s not hungry yet."
"Okay," Qin Xiangnuan obediently took the chopsticks and ate a few bites, which she needed to do. Qin Guohua wouldn’t think too much of it, but Hu Li might suspect that she had already eaten her fill elsewhere.