Chapter 55: Chapter 55 Going to the Marketplace
Yesterday, Su Yunjin was curious about why Gu Ya would suddenly ask her if she wanted to go to the market, and now it seems that Gu Ya might be planning to sell the game at the market.
“Do you plan to take these game to the market to sell?” Su Yunjin asked Gu Ya.
Gu Ya picked out a dozen duck eggs and gave them to Su Yunjin, “Yunjin, keep these duck eggs for yourself to eat, I’ll take the rest to sell at the market!”
Clasping the duck eggs Gu Ya had given her, Su Yunjin asked, “Why don’t you sell the duck eggs as well?”
“Wild duck eggs aren’t worth much, and they wouldn’t fetch a good price at the market!” Gu Ya didn’t say that he actually wanted to save the wild duck eggs for his young wife to eat.
Su Yunjin really believed him, “Then I will take these duck eggs back to the house to keep.”
“Go ahead! I’ll wait for you here.” Su Yunjin went back to the house with the duck eggs, while Gu Ya stayed behind in the woodshed to deal with the game he had hunted. He hadn’t yet removed the arrows from the game, and now he needed to pull them out before he could carry the catch to the market to sell using a carrying basket.
By the time Su Yunjin had put away the duck eggs and returned to the woodshed, Gu Ya was ready. In front of Gu Ya was a basket filled with pheasants and hares, and in his hand along, another long cloth bag of a dark yellow color, “Yunjin, I’ve packed the game, let’s go to the market now!”
Su Yunjin stared at the cloth bag in Gu Ya’s hand, “What’s in there?”
“A roebuck!” The roebuck Gu Ya had hunted the day before was a mature one with a large body that wouldn’t fit in the basket alongside the pheasants and hares, so Gu Ya found a large sack to carry it separately.
Realizing that Gu Ya’s sack contained a roebuck, Su Yunjin looked at the basket in front of Gu Ya and suspected that it would be inconvenient for him to carry both the basket and the roebuck.
Therefore, Su Yunjin took the initiative and said, “Let me carry the pheasants and hares!”
Gu Ya sized up Su Yunjin and asked somewhat doubtfully, “Yunjin, are you sure you can carry it?” He looked at the basket of pheasants and hares, then at his petite wife in front of him. Considering her delicate and tender appearance, Gu Ya was genuinely worried that she might overexert herself.
“It’s just a few pheasants and hares, what can’t I carry?” Su Yunjin dismissed his concerns and directly hoisted the basket onto her back.
The pheasants and hares together weighed just around twenty to thirty pounds, and Su Yunjin really could carry them. Seeing that his young wife truly could handle the weight, Gu Ya said nothing more and walked out of the Gu Family home with her.
The village had oxcarts and, had Gu Ya been alone, he wouldn’t have minded walking to the market, but now with his young wife joining him, he didn’t plan to walk.
Instead, he directly took his young wife to where they could catch an oxcart.
Today was a market day, and under normal circumstances, the oxcart should have been crowded with people. However, it was the busy farming season, and the people of Gu Family Village were occupied with harvesting rice in the fields, leaving few heading to the market.
When Gu Ya and Su Yunjin arrived at the oxcart, there weren’t many people, just two aunties and an old woman from Gu Family Village. When the two aunties saw Gu Ya and Su Yunjin, they greeted them with a laugh, “Young Gu, you and your wife are off to the market too?”
One of the women, noticing what Gu Ya was holding, asked keenly, “Young Gu, what’s that in your hand?”