But then, he did. “I fancy a bite a’ fruit with lunch,” he said conversationally, as he got down off the bench and tied the mule’s reins to a young tree. “How ’bout y’all?”

“Yessir!” she said eagerly. “Please, sir!” And he laughed, and pulled an empty basket out from beneath the seat before helping her down.

“Lessee if we kin fill this quick,” he told her, and set to picking.

A few berries went into her mouth (to make up for the pain of being stuck by thorns), but most went into the basket. And most of the fruit was fully ripe, so it wasn’t too terribly long before the basket was, in fact, full.

It occurred to her that Jeb was treating her like a little girl, and not the woman-grown she was by her years. But right now—she didn’t care. Not if being treated like a little chile was going to get her this kind of treat.

“Mistuh Jebediah?” she asked, because she was dying to know. Was it some kind of green to eat? The leaves were enormous. She could scarcely imagine how someone would cook it—would they eat it raw? “What’s the stuff a-growin’ in the field on t’other side of the blackberries?”

He laughed and laughed. “That there’s ’baccy, young’un! Ain’t you never seen it afore?”

“Not a-growin’,” she admitted. The whole way, she’d seen field after field of the stuff, and wondered what it was. She knew enough about farming to know that this, and not corn, was a farmer’s cash crop. He grew corn for his family and his animals, but he grew ’baccy for money.

“Wall, there ’tis,” he said, and looked at the basket, which was almost overflowing. “Huh. Missy, most young’uns I know’d et more than they picked, but since y’all didn’t, I reckon we got us ’nuff fer dinner an’ supper too. We’ll stop at next crick we cross.”

He helped Anna back up on the seat, and picked up the reins. Daisy, who had been contentedly munching the weeds growing at the foot of the blackberry bushes around her bit, obediently picked up her head. “Walk on, Daisy,” Jeb ordered, and off they went again.

But before too long, they came to another small field of corn, with a farmer working in it, and he stopped her with a “whoa-up.” “Howdy, neighbor!” he hailed the stranger. “I got me a hankerin’ fer roastin’ ears. Y’all got any t’trade?”

The farmer straightened up from his hoeing and moved over to the road, as Anna sat quietly. “Reckon I do. What’s t’trade?”

Jeb leaned over between his own legs and extracted a bit of metal from beneath the wagon seat, and held it out. “Knife blank. Been worked to a finish, jest needs a handle an’ sharpenin’, an I reckon y’all for the kinda man what knows his way ’round a good knife.”

The farmer took it from Jeb and examined it critically. “Reckon it’s wuth ’bout two ears,” he said, starting the bargaining, which carried on in a spirited manner until Jeb was the possessor of a full dozen young ears of corn and some termaters for good measure, and the farmer appeared right satisfied with his potential knife.