The rain kept falling throughout the night; the next day, the sky cleared up. However, the cotton-padded mattress inside the room was already completely wet. Tong’er took the mattress out to dry in the sun while Jiang Lî sat inside the house. A pile of shoe soles was on top of the table. This was also her daily task to do, make 50 pieces of soles in exchange of a string of copper coins. There was no use for copper coins in the mountain, and Tong’er couldn’t go down the mountain either. They could only wait for a peddler to go up the mountain and buy some cakes to eat.
