Ye Yaodong treated Little Gao to a great big eye roll. The innocent stayed innocent, and the guilty stayed guilty. He was a respectable man!
Clattering rang constantly from the bamboo baskets. A basket sat between each pair of people, and things flew into them in graceful arcs.
Especially after hearing that the other three unmarried men had been single since birth for twenty-three or twenty-four years, their hands moved even faster. They could throw with their eyes closed and still hit the mark.
Many hands made light work. With over a dozen people helping sort, they finished just as the sky began to darken.
Mother Ye told each household to take some home to eat fresh. Even unwashed, they would keep for two or three days.
She also told A Qing to bring a few more baskets and fill each one a little fuller. With workers at her house, they would go through them faster.
She had Father Ye help lift the rest onto the handcart, then pushed it to the shore to wash them. The tide happened to be coming in, so they would not have to go far.
There were far too many today. Who knew how many loads of water they would need to carry if they washed them that way? The well was not particularly close, either. The Old House had a well right outside its back door, dug when Ye Yaodong's grandfather built the house, which was much more convenient. Here, they had to go into the village to fetch water.
To save water and keep things close by, Mother Ye took them to the shore to wash. All three daughters-in-law followed to help, along with three of the People's Liberation Army men.
As for the remaining one, Captain Chen had naturally stayed behind.