The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck Read Free Book Online Page B

the woman mended and sewed he took his rakes of split bamboo and examined them, and where the string was broken he wove in new string made of hemp he grew himself, and where a prong was broken out he drove in cleverly a new bit of bamboo.
    And what he did for the farm implements, his wife, O-lan, did for the house implements. If an earthen jar leaked she did not, as other women did, cast it aside and talk of a new one. Instead she mixed earth and clay and welded the crack and heated it slowly and it was as good as new.
    They sat in their house, therefore, and they rejoiced in each other’s approval, although their speech was never anything more than scattered words such as these:
    “Did you save the seed from the large squash for the new planting?” Or, “We will sell the wheat straw and burn the bean stalks in the kitchen.” Or perhaps rarely Wang Lung would say, “This is a good dish of noodles,” and O-lan would answer in deprecation, “It is good flour we have this year from the fields.”
    From the produce, Wang Lung in this good year had a handful of silver dollars over and above what they needed and these he was fearful of keeping in his belt or of telling any except the woman what he had. They plotted where to keep the silver and at last the woman cleverly dug a small hole in the inner wall of their room behind the bed and into this Wang Lung thrust the silver and with a clod of earth she covered the hole, and it was as though there was nothing there. But to both Wang and O-lan it gave a sense of secret richness and reserve. Wang Lung was conscious that he had money more than he need spend, and when he walked among his fellows he walked at ease with himself and with all.

5
    T HE NEW YEAR APPROACHED and in every house in the village there were preparations. Wang Lung went into the town to the candlemaker’s shop and he bought squares of red paper on which were brushed in gilt ink the letter for happiness and some with the letter for riches, and these squares he pasted upon his farm utensils to bring him luck in the New Year. Upon his plow and upon the ox’s yoke and upon the two buckets in which he carried his fertilizer and his water, upon each of these he pasted a square. And then upon the doors of his house he pasted long strips of red paper brushed with mottoes of good luck, and over his doorway he pasted a fringe of red paper cunningly cut into a flower pattern and very finely cut. And he bought red paper to make new dresses for the gods, and this the old man did cleverly enough for his old shaking hands, and Wang Lung took them and put them upon the two small gods in the temple to the earth and he burned a little incense before them for the sake of the New Year. And for his house he bought also two red candles to burn on the eve of the year upon the table under the picture of a god, which was pasted on the wall of the middle room above where the table stood.
    And Wang Lung went again into the town and he bought pork fat and white sugar and the woman rendered the fat smooth and white and she took rice flour, which they had ground from their own rice between their millstones to which they could yoke the ox when they needed to do so, and she took the fat and the sugar and she mixed and kneaded rich New Year’s cakes, called moon cakes, such as were eaten in the House of Hwang.
    When the cakes were laid out upon the table in strips, ready for heating, Wang Lung felt his heart fit to burst with pride. There was no other woman in the village able to do what his had done, to make cakes such as only the rich ate at the feast. In some of the cakes she had put strips of little red haws and spots of dried green plums, making flowers and patterns.
    “It is a pity to eat these,” said Wang Lung.
    The old man was hovering about the table, pleased as a child might be pleased with the bright colors. He said,
    “Call my brother, your uncle, and his children—let them see!”
    But prosperity had made Wang Lung