“Ain’t y’all afeerd they’ll wander off or get et?” Anna asked.

Aunt Jinny just shrugged. “I got my ways,” was all she said, and led the way to the rock-walled pigsty. There was a sow with six half-grown piglets in it.

The sty had to be mucked out, and clean straw spread in it. Anna was grateful that it was her aunt who did the shoveling out; all she had to do was take another shovel and spread the muck over the compost heap. But of course—tomorrow it would be her turn. She’d have to figure out a way to keep her skirt and petticoat out of the muck.

Then the pig got a pail full of the scraps from last night’s dinner—scraps that, in the Jones household, would have been made into soup or stirred into the pot of poke salad.

The third chore was one that Anna at least knew how to do well: sweep out the cabin. She took the twig broom and applied it to the cabin floor with a will, while her aunt got some warm water from the stove-niche and a washboard and began scrubbing vigorously. A moment later she realized that it was her clothing that her aunt was scrubbing. By the time she had finished sweeping the floor, then mopping it with a damp rag-mop, her aunt had scrubbed every stitch she owned, and rinsed them, and the clothing was wrung out and ready to be hung outside, along with another couple of garments.

“Thet’s the last time I do thet fer y’all,” her aunt said, as they pegged the garments to a line strung from the top of the well to the cabin. “I ’spect y’all t’ scrub underthin’s so’s y’all allus got one clean pair on an’ one t’wear in case somethin’ gets y’all wet or dirty, an’ one ready t’wash or on th’ line. Iffen y’all’s skirt’n petticoat gets mucky, wash ’em, otherwise wash ’em oncet ev’ two weeks an’ sponge th’ hem ev’ night. Wash shirt once a week, unless it gets mucky. Wash apron iffen it gits dirty.”

That was . . . well it was a lot more washing than was done in the Jones house. But in the Jones house there was little fuel to spare to heat water, hauling water took a lot more time, and there wasn’t much money to spare for soap. Not to mention that Anna and her mother didn’t have but two sets of clothing apiece. Now, thanks to her aunt and her late grandmother, her wardrobe was, by comparison to what it had been, enormous.

The next chore was weeding, one she knew well. Except instead of saving every bit of green scrap to put in the pot of poke salad, her aunt had her just leave the weeds in the dirt for the chickens to eat. Which obviously, given the abundance of food here, made more sense than deciding whether or not it was edible by humans. And it was an absolute pleasure to weed here, where every plant, every row, promised plenty of meals to come. And, just to make everything perfect, the air sparkled; every lungful brought pleasure instead of coughing. Even the dirt here smelled better than at home.