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.“Well now,” he said thoughtfully.“I have a very high opinion of your obstinacy; and I knew I’d never get a promise of obedience from you without telling you the truth of it.I’m not a very good liar—and that old forest makes me nervous.” He grinned a small boy’s grin suddenly and added: “I think it’ll be a relief to me to be on my oath to stay out of it; I won’t have to think up my own good reasons anymore.Tell your sisters I’ll be in in a minute.”* * *I was awake and sneaking downstairs barefoot before dawn the next morning.I had done a favour for a man who mended harness, and he had said he could fix a soft padded leather collar to go under Greatheart’s harness to protect his shoulders; there were two little bald patches beginning that worried me.Bucky had said that it would be ready for me this morning, and it was a longish ride to his farm, and I’d have a lot to do later.And I liked to watch the sun rise.I saddled Greatheart and led him out, his big feet leaving not-quite-regular saucer marks in the frosty grass.I hesitated as we came to the stream; we usually went around the shop near the stream, then up the little hill towards the town, and I’d haul us water from the well when we rode by it.Today I led the horse to the stream, and waited, watching him: He lowered his head, wrinkled his black nose at the running water, and blew; then he lowered his muzzle and drank.He didn’t turn into a frog, nor into a griffin and fly away.He raised his head, slobbering over his last mouthful, and pricked his ears at me without any awareness of having done something out of the ordinary.I walked a pace or two upstream avid knelt to scoop up some water with my hands, looping the reins over my wrist.The water was so cold it made my teeth ache with the shock; but it was sweet and very good, better than the dull water from the respectable well.I didn’t turn into a frog either, and when I stood up the landscape looked just as it always had.I mounted and we jogged slowly off.* * *Poverty seemed to agree with me.Grace and I were bridesmaids at Hope’s wedding, and while Grace looked fragile and ethereal and Hope was flushed and warm with love, I did contrive to look presentable.After a year of sun and wind and hard work my skin had cleared up, and since I refused to be bothered with a hat, I was brown from working so much outside, which suited me better than my usual sallow pallor.I also stood up straighter since I had had to stop crouching over books; and I was also very strong, although this is not considered an important virtue in a woman.Grace and Hope were exceptional anywhere, but here in the country at least ordinarily pretty girls were outnumbered by plain ones, and I fitted into the background more appropriately than I had in the bright society of the city.I still hadn’t grown, though.When I was twelve, my sisters said kindly that the size of my hands and feet indicated that I would grow later; but by this time I was sixteen, and resigned to the fact that that growing streak just wasn’t going to arrive.But now that I no longer had to put them in dainty white gloves, I found that my big hands had their uses; and overall I was on pretty good terms with myself.It helped that the only looking-glass in the house was in my sisters’ room.We had worried about Grace the first winter; she seemed never to get over the shock of Robbie’s loss, and grew so thin and pale I used to think I could see the firelight shining through her.But with spring she began to recover, and while she was quieter than she once had been, she put on weight, and got some colour back in her cheeks—She did most of the work and all of the organizing for the wedding day, and for the feast afterwards; and if she was thinking of Robbie, you would never have known it, seeing her laugh and dance and sing, and watch the level in the punch bowls.She even condescended to flirt a little, very delicately, with the young minister who performed the ceremony; and the poor man went home walking like one drunk, although he had tasted nothing stronger than tea the whole day.It was the day of the wedding also that Ferdy kissed me, which was how I discovered that looking presentable had its drawbacks.Ferdy was a lad a few years older than myself who helped Ger in the shop when he was needed; Ger said often that the boy had promise as a smith, and he wished he could hire him on a regular schedule.Ferdy was very tall and thin, with bony hands and a big nose and a wild thatch of red hair.We had become friends over the last few months—he’d started working for Ger in early June—and he taught me to fish, and to snare rabbits, and to kill and clean them when they were snared.I liked him, but I didn’t like him kissing me.The wedding day was blue and clear and warm—hot, after the second cup of punch.The ceremony was performed in our tiny parlour, with only the family, and Melinda and a few more special friends; but afterwards the whole town came to the banquet.We had brought the big trestle tables from the Griffin in Greatheart’s cart, and set them up in the meadow, and added our own kitchen table; and spread on them were bread and sweet butter, and pies and fruits and jellies, and roast meats, plus the punch, and tea and milk for those who wanted it; and some fiddlers had upon request brought their fiddles, and so there was dancing; and while Ger and Hope laughed at their friends’ jokes, and danced with everyone, and thanked them for their good wishes, they never really took their eyes off one another.The day had begun very early, on the understanding that it would end at sundown; tomorrow would be a working day as usual, and it was near harvest, with no time to waste, even on weddings.Grace and Molly and Melinda and I cleaned up afterwards in the young twilight.We agreed with each other that we were exhausted, but none of us could stop smiling.Ferdy came by the next day especially to see me, though I didn’t want to see him, and especially not when he’d made his visit only for that purpose.He apologized to me for the day before, stammering and shaking and turning a bright scarlet, which looked very odd with his orange hair, and he begged that I forgive him.I forgave him to make him stop apologizing; but I also began to avoid him, and when I did come to the shop when he was there, or when he ate die noon meal with us, he followed me with his eyes as if I wore a black hood and carried an axe, and he was next in line.Ger, who as a new bridegroom shouldn’t have been noticing anything but the charms of his new bride, noticed the tension between his assistant and his younger sister-in-law
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