Chapter 239 — The Dowry

But no sooner had the words left his mouth than Shen Qing, seated across from him, let out a cry of amazement: "The Dou family has actually served hibiscus bird's nest, chicken-mince shark's fin, and braised bear paw..."

The faces of the several Song family members who had come to speed the trousseau turned as black as the bottom of a pot.

Dou Jichang and the others, however, were all smiles.

Dong Qi was more like a man sitting on a bed of needles.

He thought to himself that in all his years he had never been so humiliated; they were only a few delicacies, was there any need for such a fuss?

He itched to slap Shen Qing's nouveau-riche face, and before he knew it, he was glaring fiercely at Shen Qing.

The moment the words were out of Shen Qing's mouth, he knew he had misspoken. When he saw the expressions on everyone's faces, he shrank back even further and offered in a small voice, "It's not that I've never eaten them. I just never imagined the Dou family would go to such expense for a daughter's wedding..."

The more he explained, the worse it got!

Wang Yu hurriedly said to Dou Jichang with a smile, "In recent years, very few families have been able to put on an authentic 'swallow-and-shark-fin banquet'!"

Dou Jichang replied with great poise, "We've hired the chefs from the Drunken Immortal Pavilion. I can't say whether it'll be well done—please, everyone, try it and see how it compares with what you're used to. If it's badly done, then we'll have a good excuse to dock their wages!"

Wang Yu, Ma Youming, and the rest laughed heartily, and the matter was glossed over.

Still, Shen Qing had rather taken the wind out of their sails, and as they waited for the trousseau, they were somewhat more restrained.

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At the hour of the Rooster that afternoon, Dou Zhiwei's dowry left the gates of Dou Fort.

The first palanquin bore foot-high sandalwood carvings of the Three Star Gods of Longevity, Wealth, and Happiness; there followed all manner of gold, silver, and pewter vessels, silks and satins, from great camphor-wood chests with carved flowers down to boxwood, concubine's-tear bamboo, and Sichuan bamboo combs for dressing the hair—there was nothing that was not there, though for men of means like Wang Yu and the others, none of it was cause for wonder.

What was wondrous was the one palanquin holding two full coffers of silver drafts, each weighted down by a pair of red-gold lingzhi scepters more than a foot long, so dazzling that men stared and could not look away.

"Good God!" Ma Youming blurted out. "Thank heavens this Fourth Young Lady of the Dou family is marrying into the Ying family's estate of the Duke Who Guards the Realm—if she were marrying anyone else, I fear the thieves would be slipping in the back door before the dowry was through the front!" And then, with a sigh to Wang Yu, "The Dou folk have some nerve!"

Even the steady Wang Yu could not help but change color.

He dealt with silver every day of his life, yet a whole palanquin of silver drafts produced at one stroke... and displayed so bare-faced in the bridal procession, at that—it still left him shaken.

"Forty thousand taels at the very least!" he could not resist a glance, and said. "Every last one of them a ten-tael draft from the Tongde Silver House! The Dou family must be one of Tongde's handful of greatest patrons, or Tongde could never have printed so many ten-tael drafts specially for them—that would take months of printing at the least."

Wang Yu dealt with money every day. He was sensitive to such things.

The Tongde Silver House was the largest in Beizhili, one of the few old establishments left over from the previous dynasty, cheating neither the old nor the young, backed by immense resources.

To make Tongde Silver House bow...

Shen Qing shivered as he listened, and said, "No—surely not? So much silver? However—however would they spend it all?" Then his thoughts took a wild leap: "Say, if I were to ask Brother Song for a bit of silver to tide me over, he wouldn't refuse me, would he?"

No one paid him any mind.

Gu Yu's face was dark.

The Dou family was spending so much silver to marry off this daughter—there had to be something wrong with her!

Dong Qi's mind, meanwhile, had gone blank.

All he knew was that Song Yan had found himself a most powerful clan of in-laws, and that the gulf between himself and Song Zhi had grown wider still.

Zhang Xuming, for his part, reflected that Song Yan had asked his wife to serve as matron of honor; it seemed there were certain things he ought to say to her beforehand.

Only Lu Zhan wore a face full of smiles.

It seemed his uncle had indeed put his heart into Yantang's marriage.

When he went home and told his grandfather, the old man would be delighted!

Song Han's face was utterly blank; there was no telling what he was thinking.

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Dou Bingheng came off duty and had meant to go to a dinner engagement, but just as he was about to step into his sedan chair, it came to him that today was the day Dou Yan sent off the trousseau, and he instructed his attendants: "Cancel my dinner for me—I want to go have a look at the Longhua Temple Lane."

It seemed the old Cabinet Lord still felt a measure of guilt toward the fourth young lady!

The attendants chorused their assent and ordered the bearers to carry Dou Bingheng to Yunqi Temple Alley.

But once the sedan reached Yunqi Temple, it could go no farther.

The attendant explained, drenched in sweat, "We've run into the Fourth Miss's hair-dressing ceremony!"

Dou Bingheng grunted in acknowledgment and lifted the curtain to look. All around him the crowd was buzzing with endless chatter: "A whole pallet of silver notes! Weighted down with four scepters of pure gold—those scepters, glittering gold, a full foot long, heavy as anything, bright enough to blind you... And the notes, every one of them the same, if not a hundred thousand taels then fifty thousand... In all my years I've never seen a daughter married off like this! The Dou family truly deserves to be the richest in the realm!"

The whole affair had been exaggerated several times over.

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Sisters, brothers, here comes a bonus chapter!

o(n_n)o~

Begging for pink votes.

ps: The regular evening update will be on schedule!

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