Ma was right. We all coulda lived here, an’ Aunt Jinny wouldn’t hev noticed.

At the end of the path was a log cabin. There was a stone well with a little roof over it to the left of the cabin, a sturdy henhouse built of smaller logs to the right of that, and a stone pigsty beside that. At this end of the garden plot were four beehives. Aunt Jinny might not be as prosperous as Jebediah Sawyer or Caleb Strong, but she clearly was several pegs above the Joneses.

Anna stood mesmerized by all this bounty, as her aunt went on ahead, then paused to look back at her. “Foller me, girl,” she said. “Don’ stand there with yore mouth open. Happen my bees might take it fer a new hive.”

She snapped her mouth shut and followed her aunt, who stopped right by the well, turned, then seized Anna’s chin in a hard, strong hand, turning her head this way and that to look her over critically without saying a word. “How long since y’all had a bath?” Aunt Jinny demanded, scowling. “A proper bath. All over.”

Torn between acute embarrassment and indignation, Anna stammered, “Soon’s it got warm in April, an’ agin in May . . .”

“Lawsy.” Aunt Jinny shook her head. “Take off yore close. All on ’em.” And when Anna hesitated, flushing to the roots of her hair, embarrassment now total, Jinny snapped, “Now, goldangit! There ain’t nobuddy t’see but me’n God, an’ nuther one of us cares whut y’all look like nekkid!”

Hands shaking, she pulled off her dress, then her petticoat, her thin, sad little excuse for a chemise, and her drawers. Aunt Jinny snatched them up, but held them in a way that made it look like she thought they were filthy, and went into the cabin with them and the basket with Anna’s bundle in it. When she came out again, she had a big piece of flour sack, a smaller rag, a wide-toothed comb, and a rough chunk of yeller soap. “Here,” she said, thrusting the soap, rag, comb, and sacking at Anna. “Scrub. All over. Hard. Wash yore hair. Keep pullin buckets’a water outa the well t’do it with.” Then she stomped back into the cabin, leaving Anna standing there, stark naked, with a rag in one hand and the piece of soap in the other. It was handmade soap, and she’d seen pieces like it before; it came in the baskets of potions her Ma got from Aunt Jinny to sell. And it smelled wonderful, like all the flowers in the world.

Well . . . there didn’t seem any good reason, or any reason, really, to disobey. A bath wouldn’t hurt her, to be sure, and it wasn’t as if this were the dead of winter. So Anna pulled up her first bucket of water and began to wash.

The water was quite cold, but the sun, in the windless little clearing, was hot. And it wasn’t too long before Anna forgot her embarrassment and began enjoying how a really good, thorough bath was making her feel, a much more thorough bath than she could ever have gotten in the old tin tub. She hadn’t really thought about it, but the ugly on the rag didn’t lie; she had soot and grime almost everywhere, especially her hair. As she washed and poured water from the bucket over herself, the water all ran down the slight incline into the garden, where it quickly soaked into the earth.