She hummed under her breath as she worked, quite thoroughly happy, despite Aunt Jinny’s frowns and odd manners, for the first time in a long time.

“The dove, she is a pretty bird, she sings as she flies. She brings us glad tidings and she tells us no lies . . .”

“Anna! Dinner!” came the hail from cabin, and she came to herself with a start, realizing she was halfway down the low slope, having weeded half the garden-plot. She picked herself up, shook the dirt out of her skirt, and hurried to the cabin.

It became evident that, like the Sawyers, Aunt Jinny’s two biggest meals were breakfast and dinner. It wasn’t as big a spread as the Sawyers had, but it was plenty. Poke salad and cornbread, thick bean soup with either ham or bacon in it (she couldn’t tell which), pickles, more of that herb tea, blackberry jam. “You best get used t’ bean soup,” Aunt Jinny cautioned, as she ladled out a big bowlful for Anna. “I keep a pot a-goin’ most o’ th’ time.”

Anna was too busy trying to eat the delicious stuff and not burn her mouth to reply.

Then it was time to take the clothing down off the line. Aunt Jinny eyed it critically, then sat her down with the workbasket to mend and patch using the contents of a scrap basket. Then she handed Anna a pile of pieces of slightly yellowed, soft fabric. “Y’all kin sew as well as mend, I hope?” she asked, and without waiting for a reply, continued, “I cut up a petticoat inter two sets of drawers an’ two chemises. Set to ’t.”

Anna began to stammer her thanks, but Aunt Jinny just cut her off with a gesture. “’Twas close jest sittin’ in a chest doin’ nobody no good. Might’s well be useful. When y’all finish thet, we’ll see what else kin be turned t’use.”

And with that, she turned her back on Anna and began working at her sink, doing something with the dried plants and herbs that were everywhere. Presently, Anna figured out that she was making some of her famous potions, and reckoned the best thing she could do right now was prove she could do as she was told.

She was a very good seamstress—that being one of the few things she could do without getting tired. Good enough that she sometimes got work from one or another of the miners’ wives sewing for them, their husbands, or their children. And it was a pleasure to have absolutely everything she needed, right there at hand, without having to make do. There was even a reel of narrow cotton tape for drawstrings at the waist and knees of the drawers and the neck of the chemise. How—and why—did Aunt Jinny have all this if all she wore were men’s shirts and dungarees?

She’d finished a pair of drawers and a chemise and was well on her way to finishing the second pair of drawers when her aunt finished her work at the sink, and interrupted her. “Stand up,” she demanded, a thick wooden pencil in one hand, and a piece of leather and a piece of that cotton tape in the other. Anna obeyed. Her aunt directed her to stand on the leather with her skirt hiked up to her knee. Aunt Jinny drew around her feet, then took the cotton tape and measured around her ankle, and then around her knee, marking each length with a knot, then told her to go back to her work. “What’s thet fer, please?” Anna asked as she sat down.