But her good mood was knocked out the moment she stepped through the front door.
By the time she returned to Peace Town, it was already evening, and Chiang Xiao knew that her grandparents would surely be staying at Osmanthus Alley since she was not home, so she naturally didn’t plan on going back to Siyang Village.
However, she had not expected that someone who couldn’t possibly appear at Osmanthus Alley would now be in her view.
The door was open, and Ho Laidi stood in the courtyard, one hand on her hip, the other shouting at Ge Xiaotong, who was standing in the hall.
"I’ve said so much, did you dead girl hear any of it? I tell you, if you don’t clean out the room by noon tomorrow, I’ll go straight to the Ge Family, ask Old Lady Ge which kind of bandit they raised, wanting to take over the Old Chiang Family’s house! Chiang Laoer, that useless dead man, actually lets a woman bring her whole family over to shit and piss on his head, not caring about his own family at all!"
It looked like Ge Xiaotong was the only one at home, her belly was already quite big, and she stood far away from Ho Laidi, cautiously gripping her stomach, but her face was full of indignation.
"What nonsense are you talking about? Didn’t I already tell you? This house is rented by us! What does it have to do with your family? You come over and argue every day, isn’t it annoying?"
"What did you say? What did you say?" Ho Laidi took two steps toward her, and Ge Xiaotong hurriedly stepped back two steps. Seeing her defensive attitude, Ho Laidi became even more annoyed, "You dare to say that the rent for this house isn’t paid by Chiang Laoer? If it’s rented by your family, and your family is so great, why don’t they all live here? And to occupy three rooms? This one, tell me, isn’t this room Chiang Xiao’s, you dead girl?"
Ho Laidi pointed directly at Chiang Xiao’s room.
Her room’s door was made new when the furniture was fitted, a brand-new wooden door, Ge Xiaotong’s doing, who felt that the color of the raw wood was too monotonous and insisted on sticking a poster of a female star on the door, a new poster that cost two dimes.
Moreover, feeling that it still wasn’t pretty enough, she made a lot of bows out of collected candy wrappers, threading them together with small pieces of straws and woolen yarn to create a homemade curtain full of the character of the young girls of that era.
When the curtain was ready, Ge Xiaotong had Xu Linjiang hang it up for her, and Chiang Xiao was speechless when she saw it. If she were actually thirteen years old, she would definitely have liked the candy wrapper curtain, as it was also characteristic of that era, and besides, being able to create such things was already quite skillful, something that any young girl would be surprised and pleased to see, but after all, she was not thirteen anymore.
But this was, after all, Ge Xiaotong’s kindness, and Chiang Xiao still thanked her happily.
Now it was just great, this room was more fanciful and girlish than any other room and had instantly let Ho Laidi recognize it as her room.
"So what if it’s Little’s room? It’s impossible for us to clean out two rooms for you to live in! If you can, wait until Little comes back and talk about it then!"
Ge Xiaotong was also not one to show weakness, raising her voice too, if it weren’t for the big belly that kept her from making trouble, she would have grabbed a broom already.
It was only the baby inside that kept her from taking action, but even so, she did not want to lose to Ho Laidi in terms of loudness.
"So what if she comes back? A girl’s family, yet no one knows with which wild man she’s run off to fool around, and you all just let her go, and when she comes back, she also has a big belly, let’s see if you can raise another little wretch whose father is unknown!"