Lin Xiuqing puffed out her cheeks in anger, but looking at him laughing away, she could barely keep a straight face and started laughing too.
"Hurry up and get to work. After collecting all this catch, you still have to sort out the fishing pots. Then we need to roughly sort everything by size. There's plenty left to do."
"Mm. Where are the kids?"
"Who knows where they've run off to? The ground's still wet everywhere. Maybe they're playing at one of the neighbors' houses?"
"Go call them all over to help. After a whole summer vacation, they've gotten too carried away playing. Give them more work to settle them down, instead of letting them spend all day running into other people's houses."
"All right, I'll run back and call them."
Ye Yaodong rummaged through the basket she had just sorted. There were quite a few sugar shrimp inside. It was their breeding season, and these shrimp carried eggs of various colors on their bellies, red and purple.
He casually picked out a few and tossed them into another empty bucket, then turned back to hauling in the fishing pots.
Before he had even hauled in one net, cries of "I'm coming! I'm coming! Wait for me!" reached him from every direction.
"Wow, we finally get to play on the beach!"
"Uncle Yaodong, are we going all out again today?"
"What are we catching? Or are we picking things up?"
Every one of them rubbed their hands eagerly, itching to get into the water right away. The moment they reached the beach, they kicked off their slippers, flinging them aside.
Ye Yaodong turned to look at them, speechless. "Put your shoes back on. I called you here to help, not to play. Sort the catch on the handcart for me."