Seeing that the troublesome kid who had been standing beside him had become obedient and did not seem to want to leave, the guy stopped holding him. My arms and legs are still aching slightly.
"The child calls you mom and dad, but you still say he is not your child." The shopkeeper was really angry. How could there be such parents?
"Boss, they are the child's parents. We can all testify to this." Passersby who came in with them also spoke up, looking at the parents with condemnation.
Fortunately, they thought it would be difficult for this couple to have such a bad child just now. But now, it seems that it would be difficult for this child to have such bad parents. Even the best child will be spoiled. Then he looked at the boy hiding behind the waiter with pity and regret.
"What else do you have to say? Anyway, you can't hide from this matter, otherwise you should report it to the police." The shopkeeper looked coldly at the couple in front of him and said rudely.
The man glared at the woman fiercely. If it weren't for her procrastination, so many things wouldn't have happened. Then he glanced with resentment at the dead kid hiding behind the guy. The man spent the whole day hunting geese only to be pecked in the eye by a swallow. He was defeated by a child. He felt so frustrated.
"We'll accompany you." He spat out these two words through gritted teeth, thinking that after paying the money, he would take the child back to vent his anger, and then exchange it for some silver.
Hearing that they was willing to compensate, the shopkeeper expression eased a little. Then he took out the abacus from the table, clacking it, and presented it to the man.
"This is only the loss of the wine shop, not the guests." The shopkeeper looked at the guests who were covered in grease and dirt, as well as their money for food and drinks, which also amounted to a sum of money, but these had to be compensated separately.
"How much?" The man didn't understand and asked in dissatisfaction.
"Seventy-eight taels."
"How much!?" The man looked at the shopkeeper in disbelief. He was so surprised that his voice broke, causing everyone to take a step back.
Baodan also took the opportunity to take a step back. Since the bad guy was willing to compensate, everyone's attention was focused on the shopkeeper and the man. No one paid attention to him, and even the waiters relaxed. Baodan took the opportunity to quietly run through the crowd and ran quickly in the direction he came from.
But when he ran to a fork in the road, he really didn't know which way to go. He didn't dare to stop, for fear that other bad guys would notice him. So he just chose a path at random, then found a secluded corner to hide in. In fact, it was a place for dumping garbage. There were many broken baskets here. He didn't mind and went straight into a basket and hid at the foot of the wall under a tree.
He just hoped that his parents could find him. He was now filled with fear and regret, and his heart was pounding so hard that it seemed like it would jump out of his mouth if he wasn't careful. Fortunately, he had long ago learned his mother's ways, being rude and unreasonable, making up stories, muddying the waters, and doing mischief, but he didn't expect it to actually work.
Baodan patted his frightened heart, thinking that he should have listened to his mother. Thinking of what his parents had told him about the horrors of beggars and the horrific scenes he had seen along the way, he was really scared. He was afraid of losing his life, so he huddled in the basket and dared not move.
If Baodan's mother knew that she behaved like a shrew and that her son had learned from her and even helped him out of danger, she would probably not know whether to cry or laugh.
Baodan didn't know that when he just ran into one of the roads at the fork in the intersection, Zhao Shuyu and another young man from the same village came here, called out "Baodan" a few times, looked around and found nothing, then continued to move forward.
Back at the tavern, Baodan escaped, but the couple, who were being closely watched by the waiters, couldn't get away.
Hearing the shopkeeper say seventy-eight taels, the man simply couldn't believe how much destructive power a child could have. He looked at the shopkeeper with an unpleasant expression, his eyes revealing that the shopkeeper was trying to blackmail him.
The shopkeeper's just-recently-good mood disappeared in an instant. Then he laughed because he was angry. He glanced at the man, moved away, and revealed two large wine jars that were smashed, and a wine jar on top that was more than half smaller than the wine jars. Although the wine in the two large wine jars was not good, it was not bad either. Besides, wine was expensive. This jar of wine would cost at least a dozen taels of silver, and two jars of wine were sold in a row.
Not to mention the several jars of good wine weighing ten kilograms above, which are even more expensive. One jar is equivalent to the whole jar of wine. The shopkeeper told the prices of these wines one by one. People who often came here to drink knew all of them and nodded, proving that the shopkeeper did not raise the prices arbitrarily.
The man's expression became uglier as he listened to the shopkeeper's words.
As the shopkeeper finished speaking, several guests who were in disgraceful clothes also stood up and demanded to pay not only for the food and drinks, but also for their clothes and the cost of being frightened.
The man's face was no longer black, but ashen. If he had a knife in his hand at this moment, he would have wanted to kill the brat who had made him suffer.nSeventy-eight taels plus the diners' ten taels, wouldn't that be the end of his life?
Holding back his anger, the man smiled and tried to explain to the shopkeeper and the person who was asking for compensation.
"Boss, and everyone, that child is really not my child. We were playing a joke on him outside before. And look at what we are wearing. Even if we were beaten to death, we would not have that much silver."
"If it's not your child, how could that child keep calling you dad and mom? He doesn't look like a fool."
"That's right, shopkeeper, you don't know, but before, the couple were outside, claiming to be the child's parents. The child refused to admit it and said that they were bad guys who beat up beggars. Now think about it, there must be a reason why the child didn't recognize them." Someone in the crowd followed up with this sentence.
The words were said unintentionally, but the listeners took them seriously. The shopkeeper looked at the couple with a dark look in his eyes. He had been wondering before, if they were really the child's parents, why would they want to run away without a second thought when they saw something was wrong and completely ignore the child in the tavern. Now it seems that what the child said outside was true. He was probably afraid of being caught by this couple, so he ran into their tavern in a panic and made such a big fuss.
The purpose is naturally to trap the man and woman. If this is true, he is a smart child. The shopkeeper's dislike for the child instantly dissipated a lot. But he looked around the lobby and found that the troublesome child was nowhere to be seen. It seemed that he had slipped away during the chaos.
When the man heard someone talking about the beggar, his eyes tightened with guilt, and he dared not deny that he was the child's father or mother, otherwise it would really arouse suspicion. His legs went weak and he knelt on the ground and began to complain miserably,
"Boss, please have mercy on us. We are really penniless." He searched his body and found a little over one or two taels of silver.
The woman also hurriedly took out the silver she had on her, which was even less, only a few coins. She also knelt on the ground and acted like the men, saying how she had a paralyzed mother and a bunch of children at home, and how hard her life was. She cried with tears and snot, and then kowtowed continuously.