Her doubts vanished. This was good! She felt better than she ever had in her life! And if she could learn to do that—think of the good she could do, herself!

“Kin—y’all do thet agin?” she gasped.

It took three more repetitions before Anna could work the trick herself, but when she did, the relief was not unlike the relief and release she’d felt on eating to satiation for the very first time. As if something inside her that had been starving was finally full.

“Now use the rest of the power to refresh those flowers,” Jolene said, with a tiny smile of satisfaction. “Just send a bit of power into them; we’ve been standing here so long they are sorely wilted.”

Anna held her hands over the basket and let the Glory rain down out of her hands like a gentle mist onto the roses—and to her elation, the wilted petals revived and freshened, until they looked the way they had when she’d just picked them.

“That will be how you put magic into potions, more or less, and that’s enough lessons for today, I think.” Jolene looked like the proverbial cat in cream. “You’ll surprise your aunt, which will amuse me no end. Jinny is such a prickly creature. She’s like that creature you have here with the spikes all over it—”

“A porkypine?” Anna ventured.

“Yes, that. When you cross her even the slightest, it’s a hiss and a rattle, and she bristles all over.” Jolene laughed at her own wit. “It’s so amusing, and I never get tired of doing it. As if she could ever endanger me.”

Anna laughed weakly, because Jolene seemed to expect it.

“Now, run along on the rest of your errand, and I shall be about mine,” Jolene continued, and turned to walk away, down the lane toward the road. But then she turned back. “And mind—don’t tell Virginia that I helped you. Unless she guesses it. Then you may.”

And she turned back and somehow managed to get out of sight in no time, despite taking what seemed to be a leisurely pace.

And it was only after Anna had found the patch of tiger lilies and had picked the rest of the basket full of flower heads that she remembered that Jolene had said she had an “errand”—

—and had gone off toward the Holcrofts’ farm.

But Matt and Maddie didn’t have the Glory, or Aunt Jinny would have said something.

So what could Jolene possibly want with the Holcrofts?

Cain’t be. Must be somethin’ else, she told herself.

Aunt Jinny greeted her harvest with pleasure, and immediately set her to pulling the petals off the roses and lilies and putting them in two big pots. She covered both with enough water to submerge all the petals completely, covered each pot with a plate, and set them at the hearth where the soup had been cooking. Then she and Anna sorted and cleaned the rose hips and carried them up to the other loft, where she spread them out on a clean sheet to dry.