FreeNovel
Chapter 901
About half an hour later, the road on both sides turned into a vast rubber plantation, stretching all the way to the
foot of the mountain. It was probably tens of thousands of hectares; it was endless.
Arriving at a crossroad, the two of them got off the car and the car continued to head south.
They passed several villages along the way, Passengers got off one after another, including the young couple who
got off by a bridge, leaving only Estelle
on the bus.
Tinct Village, the closest village to the foot of the mountain, was almost completely surrounded by the rubber
plantation. Its twenty or so households all worked there.
The owner of the plantation had paved roads for the nearby villages, so the car’s journey was free from muddy
roads,
Around noon, the car arrived on schedule at Tinct Village.
Estelle got off the bus. She took a look around, and headed into the village. The village was built alongside the
mountain. It was rainy and surrounded by tall, dense trees, which blocked the sunlight and brought the temperature
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtdown a few degrees.
At this time, the young people in the village were still working in the rubber plantation and hadn’t returned. Only the
elderly and children remained in the village. Two elderly men in traditional local garb were chatting under a tree,
watching Estelle as she walked by.
The houses in the village were built beside the mountain, with stone walls, Hall was used to keep livestock or store
items. The other half was for living. The roofs were covered with a kind of thatch unique to the mountain; strong
and waterproof.
As Estelle walked along the village path, she came to a household on the edge of the village. A woman with a
headscarf was drawing water from a well inside the stone wall. Seeing Estelle looking in, she immediately asked,
“Miss, are you here for a tour?”
The villagers original dialect had blended with the outside world. This was due to the tourists needing to
communicate with the staff in the rubber plantation. The dialect wasn’t quite standard, but it was understandable.
Estelle walked in, shaking her empty water bottle, and asked, “Could I get some water from you?”
“Of course!” The woman looked to be in her mid-twenties, but did not look young. Her face was lined with wrinkles,
and she watched Estelle with a slightly shy expression. “Are you hungry?”
The locals were happy to host tourists for meals, as they could earn a decent meal fee. When they encountered
generous guests, the money would be quite a substantial amount.
“Sure” Estelle nodded.
The woman was overjoyed. She told her two children to go play while she went to cook. This family had two
children, a girl who was about five or six years old and a boy who looked four. The girl was barefoot, wearing very
ragged clothes. They looked like adjusted adult clothes that had been washed so many times, and had lost their
original color.
The boy’s clothes were slightly better.
The girl had a basket on her back. While her mother was cooking, she played in the courtyard with her little brother.
Estelle sat on a bench in the courtyard, turned her head and saw the little girl staring blankly at her. Her eyes were
full of curiosity, and seemed to be filled with other emotions as well.
Estelle took the last bag of cookies from her bag and gave it to her. “You eat it!”
The girl took a step back, looked at Estelle and shook her head.
“Do you want it?” Estelle asked casually. “You can eat this, you know.”
The girl slowly approached, took the cookies from Estelle’s hand, said a quiet thank you”, then turned and left.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmShe waved to her little brother, happily shaking the cookies in her hand.
The boy looked up, drooling all over his clothes.
Just as the girl opened the bag of cookies, the woman who was cooking suddenly appeared with a basket in her
hand. She quickly grabbed the cookies from the girl’s hand and handed the basket to her, speaking in the local
dialect.
Estelle understood a few sentences, the gist being that she wanted the girl to go to the nearby vegetable garden to
pick vegetables
The girl looked back at the cookies in her mother’s hand, licked her lips, and ran out quickly with the basket.
The woman didn’t save the cookies for her daughter. She gave them to the boy next to her, urging him, “Eat
quickly, you have to finish before she comes back!
She spoke quickly, thinking that Estelle couldn’t understand. Then she smiled at Estelle and went back to the
kitchen.
When the girl came back with the vegetables, her brother had already stuffed the whole bag of cookies into his
mouth, grinning triumphantly at her.
Tears welled up in the little girl’s eyes. She seemed to want to cry, but in the end, she held back her tears.
There were no more cookies in Estelle’s bag. She could only watch as the girl squat down in disappointment, her
heart aching”
She took a big gulp of water, then looked up at the blazing sun. The intense sunlight made her eyes dazzle.
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