Father insisted chat we unpack at once, and sleep in our new home. “We thank you, my dear,” he said to Melinda, who blushed, “but we have been sleeping on the ground for so long that mattresses on a planed level floor will be a splendid luxury,” but we agreed to come to the Griffin for supper.
“You’ll save having a lot of people coming here to gawp at you,” she said, “when you’re trying to get your proper work done.” We would also stable our horses there till Father and Ger could repair our own stable. “Your young lady’s pony here,” Melinda remarked, surveying Greatheart, “needs a barn of his own. The little ones will all love him. He’s a giant’s horse, just like in the stories us mothers tell them.” She petted him, refused to be driven back to town, and set off on foot. “I have to add a little more water to the stew,” she said, smiling, “to feed all the extra mouths.” Daphne and Rachel were parted reluctantly from the “young lady’s pony” and trotted away in their mother’s wake.
We were lucky, because everyone in town liked anyone Melinda liked, and everyone was predisposed to like the new blacksmith. Melinda told us that the lack of one had been the chief topic of conversation around the fireplace at the Red Griffin for two years, and if she heard “Ah, what we best need is a proper blacksmith now” once more she would heave a barrel of beer at the speaker.
Ger had the shop going again—bellows mended, the oven for making charcoal patched air-tight, and tools laid out—within a week of our arrival, while the three of us girls were still airing the bedding, mending socks, and figuring out the whimsical nature of the kitchen ovens. Father spent an afternoon in the stable, measuring and whistling and measuring some more, and in three weeks we had our horses under their own roof; and he was building a pen for them, enlarging the hayloft over them, and thinking about a coop for chickens. Melinda had offered us a few pullets.
We three girls didn’t fare quite so well, particularly at the outset; we realized in those first weeks just how spoiled we were, and how unsuited for a life without servants, There’s an art to scrubbing a floor; not a very delicate art, but one that must be learned. I, who was a rougher article to begin with, developed calluses almost at once; my sisters’ tender skin developed blisters, and the coarse material of our new working clothes chafed them. We didn’t talk about our difficulties, beyond the sharing of hints about making things easier that we discovered the hard way; and slowly, as the weeks passed, our darns got less lumpy and our puddings less leaden. We went to bed every night numb with exhaustion, in the beginning, but we grew stronger, and with strength and increasing skillfulness came cheerfulness. Melinda, who almost never stopped talking, had a sharp eye for all of that, and in among her inconsequential chatter she let fall, as if by accident or as among knowing friends, any number of helpful suggestions that we silently though no less appreciatively put to use.
Our first winter was an easy one, the natives told us, and we were as grateful as we could be, although it seemed like a very harsh winter to us. We had never seen more than a few inches of snow on the ground at one time, nor for longer than a few weeks. Greatheart grew & winter coat as thick as a Persian rug, and the long white feathers that grew below his knees entirely covered his huge feet; his short sharp ears were lost in his grey forelock. He was alone in his stable, except for the chickens, since Tom had come through in the autumn, as promised, and collected the two hired horses and the wagon—and complimented us on our progress.
By the time Tom had come and gone I had trained poor Greatheart to go in harness; I was much more conscious of the loss of his dignity than he was, for he had the sweetest of tempers. There wasn’t, as it turned out, very much training to it; Ger traded a mended plough for some second-hand harness that could be patched and enlarged to fit our huge horse; and I put it on him and told him to go forwards and he went. He understood almost by instinct the difference in strength and balance of pulling a weight instead of carrying it. Father built a small wagon for him, and Ger strengthened it with iron fastenings and added some ropes and chains for grappling big logs. The horse developed the white marks that come from wearing a collar in the dark dappled grey hair of his shoulders; but perhaps Tom Black had been right, because he did not seem to miss carrying the King.
Even the canary came through the winter in good health and spirits. He was a very useful bird, because he gave Grace and Hope and me something weaker than ourselves to worry over; and he sang as though he appreciated it.
We had had no time to think of a name for him before we left the city, and it was some weeks even after we’d moved into our new home that Hope, putting water in his dish one morning, looked up suddenly and said, “He still doesn’t have a name!” Grace and I stared back at her, and then at each other, in dismay. We were silent several minutes, Hope’s hand still poised over the water dish; and then the canary, as if impatient, burst into song. We looked at him then, and Grace said, “Of course. Why haven’t we thought of it long since? Orpheus.” I made an incredulous noise and she smiled and said, “A little sister like you, dear, will upset the best-regulated mind”; and Hope laughed and said, “Orpheus! It’s perfect.” And Orpheus he became, except that it degenerated over the months to Phooey. I still called him Orpheus, however, and he still sang.
The following summer, a little over a year after we arrived, Gervain and Hope were married. By that time, another room had been added to the house, opening off the parlour, for the newlyweds’ bedroom; and the local mason built a chimney for it. Father made them a big bed with a tall scallop-edge headboard for a wedding present. Ger and I had had the two attic rooms, and Grace and Hope had shared one of the bedrooms, while Father had the other. Grace invited me downstairs, but I was fond of my attic, and knew besides that she would like having a room of her own again. There had been a small storm about my being shut off in the attic when we first moved in, but I had insisted. Sharing the little room with my sisters, I said, we’d be as crowded as potatoes in a good chowder; someone had to move upstairs, I was the youngest, and besides I liked the attic.
Father had cut a window for me in the vertical wall, which overlooked the now re-established garden and beyond that the great forest. When I was not too tired, which happened more often as I grew accustomed to the work, I would stay up an extra hour and read by the light of one precious candle. But candles were too dear to waste often on so profitless a pursuit as reading, even if my eyes didn’t soon become too heavy to prop open, I’d been able to keep half a dozen of my oldest, most battered, and most written-in books from the auction. In our new life it was the reading I missed the most. The daylight hours were spent working, and much of the evening also, mending clothes and tools and bits of this and that by firelight. “This and that” for most of the spring had consisted of my taking over most of the necessary sewing to free Grace, who was the finer seamstress, to work secretly on an embroidered counterpane for the wedding.
The work had broken down into a routine for each of us. Ger worked in the smithy; his ability was such that before the first winter was past there were people traveling thirty miles to come to him. Father’s old skill with wood had gradually returned to his fingers and brain, The tiny lean-to that was built against the blacksmith’s shop was enlarged, and Father built carts and cabinets there, and patched roofs and walls in town. His hair had turned snow-white, and he moved more slowly than he once had; but he carried himself tall and straight, and he could talk and laugh again. And I suspected Melinda of falling in love with him. He was gentle and courtly to her, as he was to all women, including his daughters; but
I thought he displayed a special grace for Melinda. And she, who was simple and kind and forthright, blushed often when he spoke to her, and twisted her hands in her apron like a girl.