“Now come on in, Anna, and we’ll all have lunch,” Jeb continued, in a much less stern tone. “Y’all can meet my wife, an’ give her a hand with the washin’-up.”

Well it was clear she was not going to be set in the corner as a guest. Not that she had expected to do anything but earn her keep. At least she was still feeling good enough she could.

She was more than a bit apprehensive about Missus Sawyer, having spent the night unchaperoned in the presence of her husband and all, but she need not have been. Missus Sawyer, a round dumpling of a woman with a merry face and brown braids wound around and around her head, was waiting at the back door. “You mus’ be Anna!” she said, with welcome and enthusiasm. “I hope my Jeb didn’ wear yore ear out with his jawin’!” Before Anna could answer, she had taken Anna’s shoulders in her hands and held her out at arm’s length, examining her closely. “Lawsy, you’re hardly bigger nor a ladybug! Y’all better come on in an’ set right down t’ some vittles afore the wind blows y’all away! Come wash up, an’ we’ll et.” And she didn’t give Anna any choice about it; she hustled Anna into the house with a shooing motion, as if she were chasing hens, crowded her in with the rest to wash her hands and face at the pump, and pulled out a ladder-back chair for her at the gingham oilcloth–covered table.

The kitchen was a bit warm, given that the iron stove was right there, but Anna didn’t mind. Compared to the kitchen part of the Jones house it was downright opulent. A nice bucket of coal and stack of firewood beside the stove, a sink with a pump under the window, a counter purpose-built next to it for working on, three pantry cupboards and a dresser with china displayed on it, a rag rug under the round table and six matching chairs, and food stored literally everywhere, including sausages and hams hanging from the rafters.

“We et th’ big meals at breakfus’ an’ dinner,” Missus Sawyer said, as the rest took their places around the table. “Supper’s naught but some soup an’ bread. So mind y’all et hearty now.”

Anna was doing her very best not to look shocked at the sheer amount of food on the table, but it was very difficult not to gape. Hot biscuits with butter and jelly in little bowls. A bowl of pickles. A dutch oven full of stew, and not just the thin, soup-like stuff her Ma made, but with a thick, brown gravy. Fried squash—a heaping platter of it. Roasting ears. And pie! A glorious pie with dark juice bubbled up through the slits in the crust!

She wondered how much she would be allowed to take. Better be cautious. Just a little of each . . . .

But Missus Sawyer forestalled her by taking her plate, heaping it with stew and squash, adding a roasting ear, and topping it with two biscuits before setting it back down in front of her. “Now y’all et all that,” she cautioned. “There’s no wastin’ in this house.”