The one thing that Anna prided herself on was her needlework—not fancy-work, because for one thing she never had time to learn it, and for another, she had nothing to spare to make it with, unless she unraveled rags for colored threads. No, it was her plain-sewing and mending she was proud of. She was better at it than Ma.

She found white darning cotton and a proper-sized needle and went to work, and before long all the tears and small holes had been neatly dealt with. She held up one of the chemises to admire it, and noticed the little touches of white-on-white embroidery around the square yoke. Just then her aunt came out with more fabric in her hand, and paused to look over Anna’s work with a critical eye.

“Ain’t bad,” she said. “Stand up.”

Anna stood up, and Jinny held a plain brown canvas skirt up against her. The waist was going to fit, but it was only going to come to above her ankles, like the nightgown. “Thet’ll do,” Jinny declared. “Ma were a little shorter than you be. Won’t drag in th’ dust’n’ mud. Got shirts t’go with’t, an’ termorrer we kin cut up a petticoat fer more drawers’n suchlike.” She cast a glance at the sky; Anna had just managed to catch the very last of the light to do her mending by, and now the sun was below the level of the trees. The flaming red color painted across the western horizon proclaimed tomorrow would be a fine and sunny day. “Thet lot ye done will do fer termorrer. Iffen y’all ain’t tired, y’all should be. Bedtime fer y’all.”

She led Anna inside—but not, as Anna had feared, to the bed in the corner, nor the bedding on top of the fireplace. Instead she motioned to Anna to go up to the loft above the fireplace. Wearing this “nightgown” was extraordinarily freeing. Since it ended just above the ankle, there was nothing she had to do in the way of gathering skirts out of the way except to climb the ladder.

There was a small window cut into the wall beside the chimney, which let in just enough of the twilight that she could see there was an enormous box on the floor shoved up against the chimney, made up with sheets and a pillow, with quilts over one end. The box was filled with something puffy. Probably a sheet over hay, and not a proper mattress. Still, the hay in the Sawyers’ barn had been more comfortable than her proper straw mattress at home, and had smelled better too. She made her way to the box, all bent over beneath the peak of the roof, and lowered herself down—

—only to have the surprise of lowering herself down into a cloud.

. . . a featherbed?

She’d heard of featherbeds, of course, as in, any time someone wanted to describe something particularly comfortable, they’d say “soft as a featherbed,” but she’d never actually lain in one.