That evening, Li Mubo's mother waited for him to come home from work, her face stern. "Hurry up and eat. Come to my room when you're finished. I need to talk to you."
Li Mubo knew at once it had to be about his marriage to Yaping, and he couldn't keep the smile off his face. "I'm not that hungry, Mom. Why don't we just go into the room and talk now?"
His mother had anticipated her son's attitude. She snorted. 'Well, only he knows if he's actually hungry. If he wants to starve, let him.'
Once they were in the room, his mother matter-of-factly relayed everything the matchmaker had said about the betrothal gift earlier that day.
Li Mubo was startled to hear this—not pretending, but genuinely shocked. "Two hundred? I thought it was eighty."
'Xiao Ping told me the betrothal gift was supposed to be eighty. How could it have more than doubled in just two months, now that they've brought in a matchmaker?'
"What are you talking about? What eighty?" his mother asked, confused.
