“I’ve seed boys afore!” she objected.

“But did they see y’all?” her aunt asked shrewdly.

She bit her lip, because she knew very well what the answer was.

But her aunt took pity on her and patted her hand. “An’ mebbe y’all will suit. He’s got th’ Glory, y’all got the Glory, an’ there’s been wuss thangs to git hitched over.”

Then she changed the subject. “Send ’im ’nother note thet I reckon it’s gonna keep rainin’ temorrer, which I do, an’ y’all will see ’im on Monday.”

She almost cried in dismay. But there wasn’t anything she could do about the rain, and if Aunt Jinny was right (and why wouldn’t she be?), it would be better to let him know.

The little piskie was still just standing there waiting, as if it had figured there was going to be another exchange of notes. She rubbed out what she had written as best she could, wrote a new one, and folded the note and handed it to the critter, which ran off, just as before. In a much shorter time than she had expected, it returned. Sad! read the note. Miss U already.

So that was all right.

Even if it was all wrong.

“Thenkee kindly,” she told the piskie, who took that as the dismissal it was, and skittered away.

Aunt Jinny seemed to take pity on her then, because the next thing she knew, her aunt had taken out some corn from a bag she kept separate from the parched corn she often used in meals. “Y’all know what this is?” she asked, holding out a handful.

It was—odd. Round in shape, and hard and shiny, nothing like the rectangular, matte flint corn Jinny grew and dried to have ground into meal. “No, ma’am,” she said, baffled.

“It’s poppin’ corn. An’ we’re gonna et some.” Before she could ask any questions, her aunt had dropped a little bacon fat into the stew-pot, dropped a couple of handfuls into the fat, and clapped a lid on it. Then she put it by the fire.

The first explosions took Anna by surprise, but the delicious aroma coming from that pot surprised her even more. It didn’t take long after the first explosions for the last to die off. Jinny had pulled the pot away from the fire as soon as the popping began, and now she took the lid off, grabbed the pot with rags wrapped around her hands, and tilted the contents out into a bowl. She set the pot back down, sprinkled salt over the fluffy white and fragrant bits, and set to eating. Anna got a handful and tasted it, and was won over immediately.

“I c’n see there’s gonna be a lot o’ letter writin’,” Jinny said between bites. “Leastwise, ’lessen we c’n larn th’ both of y’all how to scry.” She was silent for a moment, as she seemed to roll that notion around in her mind. “Happen I ain’t got a lot o’ paper t’ spare. Josh might hev more; he got proper schoolin’ till he started workin’ fer Cavenel. We’ll arst him ’bout thet when he comes up t’ arst fer my blessin’. An’ we’ll see iffen he c’n larn scryin’.” She sighed. “Then I’ll hev t’ figger out a scryin’ bowl or somethin’ fer y’all.”