In the morning, Minglan sat by the table alone with her eyes still heavy from sleep. She held her spoon up so slowly as if she was still dreaming. Danju couldn’t help shaking her head when she looked at Minglan, “Madam, you are so lucky to be a woman. Otherwise, if you are a man, how are you able to read the book until mid of the night and go to work early in the morning?”

Minglan almost laughed out loud. Our dear spiderman once told us, with great power comes great responsibility. Since the men in ancient times had many more privileges than the men in modern times, they should at least work harder. Come to think about it, during Minglan’s previous life, she also had stayed up late for work and got up early next day in the morning… Gosh, she really missed her previous life. At that time, although the sky wasn’t clear, the ground was not so clean and the rivers were kind of polluted, women could still share part of the family properties after the divorce if their husbands cheated on them. Also, women in modern times could come after their husbands’ concubines, retort their aggressive mothers-in-laws and post on the Internet about how their best friends seduced their husbands. The most important thing was, even if they cheated on their husbands, they wouldn’t be sentenced.

All right– Minglan stopped wandering those fantasies. One should always come back to the reality.

Wang Xifeng, the famous madam in ancient times, truly was an unreachable benchmark for Minglan. What a workaholic! Without any extra wages or the chance of promotion except for some profits that could be reaped from her work, Wang Xifeng still completely devoted herself into her job. However, it was just not worthy in Minglan’s view. Every day, Wang Xifeng woke up at the midnight and started to deal with the family affairs before the daybreak. Also, she had to consider every member of her family. Even so, she still volunteered to help deal with the matters in Lord Ning’s mansion! Come on!

At last, she lost her health and used up all her dowry. What’s more, because she never had a son, her husband married You Erjie. So why did she work so hard? Because she needed the sense of achievement? It was so hard to understand.

As for Minglan, her nature just prevented her to be a model worker. She had already asked Liao Yong’s wife and other mamas in charge to call the roll in the morning in turns and arrange the daily jobs to other servants. In the meantime, Minglan would check the accounts after the breakfast. Most of the time, the second day’s work would be dispatched before the dinner of previous night. Minglan only needed to do the surprise inspection from time to time. And so far, everything went pretty well in the mansion.

Mama Cui was very unsatisfied with Minglan’s ‘laziness’ and had lectured the latter more than once. However, Minglan only spoke with eloquence, “The result is always the same no matter I choose to work hard or not. Why do I have to torture myself?”

Mama Cui argued with a straight face, “Madam, you only need to work hard when you are young. When you have many children and grandchildren, you can enjoy resting yourself all the time.”

“No, no, no.” Minglan wagged one of her fingers, saying, “Mama, do you enjoying getting up late now?”

Mama Cui, trying to dodge the bright gaze of Minglan, replied, “Not that much.”

“See? As the saying goes, pluck flowers as they bloom; wait and you’ll have only the twigs. I can’t wait until I get old to have a good sleep. Other young madams don’t have the chance to have a good sleep, but I do. Also, if I don’t take good care of myself, I would only waste what God has given me. Am I right, mama?”

As a woman who was clumsy of speech, Mama Cui never talked too much. So right now she could only glared at Minglan in anger. Everybody else all praised that the Sixth Lady of the Sheng family was the most docile and obedient girl. However, only Mama Cui knew that Minglan was a perceptive girl who always complied in appearance but opposed inwardly. All those wicked theories all sounded plausible when being spoken by her. She would approach you with a beaming smile and discuss with you with her eyes curved as if she really wanted to consult you.

Mama Cui had to admit that she had been no match for Minglan when this girl had reached nine years old.

Minglan watched the look on Mama Cui’s face, finding the latter already being persuaded by her. Then she coaxed Mama Cui smilingly, “I know your good intention, mama. But I don’t even know how long I’ll be able to enjoy good times like this. If one day we all go back to Marquis Ningyuan’s mansion, I still have to pay my respect to Old Madam Qin before daybreak. I might even have to stand for the whole day. So I should enjoy my good days as long as I can.”

“Will we go back?” Mama Cui asked in a suspicious voice.

Minglan chuckled and said, “We all belong to the Gu family now. I’m not sure we could live dependently forever.”

Mama Cui sighed, knowing that she couldn’t make any more comments. Since she couldn’t make Minglan change, she could only discipline all the other maids and servants strictly in the mansion.

Minglan had no objections about that. She was from the ages of the internet and knew about the power of the rumors. If the servants in the mansion weren’t disciplined with a heavy hand, they might pass on the messages to the people outside of the mansion. After all, there were so many people in Marquis Ningyuan’s mansion keeping an eye on her.

The most essential place was the main yard of House of Auspiciousness.

The maids of the inner yards included the ones who had been brought here by Minglan, the ones who had been bought from the outside and the children of the elder servants.

Momo Chang had picked two groups of maids in summer. So she had named all those maids Xia XX, no matter they had been bought from the outside or been born in the mansion. Xiazhu (summer bamboo) and Xiahe (summer lotus) who were from the first group had already been sent to Minglan. And after that, Momo Chang had picked another group of maids in winter. Then all those maids were named Dong XX. Minglan found that method quite effective. It was spring right now. Then the new maids who had just got picked in the mansion all called Chun XX. (T/N: Xia meant for summer, Dong meant for winter and Chun meant for spring in Chinese.)

Hearing of that, Xiaotao couldn’t help rolling her eyes to Minglan.

According to the tradition, there were always some discreet ones who would be punished as a warning to others.

The new maids hadn’t been disciplined for a long time. Moreover, they were still at a young age and enjoyed having fun. The everyday food and clothing were quite abundant for them. As for those who had worked in Minglan’s yards, they lived almost like the ladies who only wore expensive silks and ate rich food. What’s more, now they wouldn’t even be surprised to see those exquisite appliances which were made by fine porcelain and precious jade.

Every time Minglan saw the items of expenditure, she would sigh secretly and thought, ‘No wonder those maids in Grand View Garden would rather die than leave the mansion. No wonder those girls all struggled to be concubines. Because if they go back to their home, they would still be the poor civilians who wore ragged clothes and lived in shabby houses. But if they stayed in the mansion, they could still live a rich life like a lady. The material comforts truly were huge temptations.’

Not only were the food and clothing in Gu’s mansion in top grade, those maids could also gain many rewards of the gold and silver jewelries. Since they didn’t have too much heavy work to do every day and they all assumed Minglan to be a kind madam, they just stopped restraining themselves anymore.

Someone with a bad temper had picked a quarrel with others, someone fought others for the clothes and the jewelries, someone loafed on her job or forgot about her duties, someone entered into Minglan’s room without permission and someone had some wicked ideas… It had only been seven to eight days since those maids had arrived at Gu’s mansion, Lvzhi and Ruomei had already caught five or six maids who had made mistakes.

Punishing others with rules was another kind of art. Minglan decided to be a third-rate artist.

Everyone’s duty should be specified. That was the first thing to do. Then Minglan had asked someone to write down what kinds of things the servants shouldn’t do, what kinds of places they shouldn’t go, what kinds of things they shouldn’t say or what kinds of clothes they shouldn’t wear. The minimal punishment for the maid who had violated the regulations was being reproached. As for the heavy ones, there were beating on the hands, deducting their wages, kicking them out of the mansion. The maids who were driven out of the inner yard couldn’t stay in the outer yard either. They could let their parents take them back home or work in the manors outside of the mansion. Only the ones who had done huge mistakes would be kicked out and sold to others.

Every mistake those maids had made would be recorded with the remarks of the causes, what kinds of punishments they had received and their attitudes toward the punishments. As those records accumulated gradually, Minglan could have a clear acknowledge of those servants. For example, if someone kept making mistakes, even if those mistakes were just minor ones, Minglan still couldn’t let that servant stay in the mansion anymore. Otherwise, some shrewd maids might argue about the matter of fairness and make the same mistakes on purpose.

In fact, the most severe punishment was beating the guilty maids to death instead of selling them. However, Minglan didn’t appreciate that way. First, killing a person was always a cruel thing. Second, it would also ruin Minglan’s reputation. After all, being sold to the poor area or even the deserted lands was actually more miserable than being killed.

Minglan only needed to know about whose wages were deducted and who were kicked out of the mansion. The rest of the punishments could be determined by all other first-class maids. Danju was the only one who could use the beating ruler because she was the most steady and gentle girl. She wouldn’t treat anyone unfairly and only implemented the punishment according to the rules, which avoided the chaos among the maids. The other first-class maids were in charge of supervising and reproaching jobs.