But her aunt immediately changed the subject by turning the walk into a lesson on various plants along the way, and what they were good for. And she kept quizzing Anna on what she’d been told, so Anna didn’t have any time to think about her aunt’s enigmatic statements.

Brilliant light at the end of the tunnel of trees told her they were about to meet the actual road, and come to the Holcrofts’ farm. By that time she was as eager to end the lesson as she was to meet the neighbors.

When they emerged into sunlight, the farm lay spread out in front of them on the left side of the road. And now that she had a better look at it, it was clear that the log farmhouse was not one, but two full stories, and the second probably held as many as six rooms. Certainly four, which were probably bedrooms for the children. The whole was quite a bit larger than her aunt’s farm, but then, there were six children here besides the couple themselves. I reckon that not only means more mouths t’feed, but more hands t’he’p. A figure she supposed was Matt Holcroft worked in the distance behind a team of two mules. She wasn’t sure what he was doing—wasn’t plowing supposed to be over by now? But then again, everything she knew about farming she’d learned most of in the last couple of days.

I didn’ know plants fed each other. Didn’ know I was s’posed to feed them. No wonder our garden didn’ grow thet good.

A dog started barking just as they approached the house, and a woman came out of it, hands shading her eyes to see what all the ruckus was about. She obviously recognized Aunt Jinny, because she took her hand away from her eyes to wave enthusiastically.

“Jinny!” the woman called in a throaty voice—the kind that carries far when someone is calling errant children in to supper. “Come up t’ the house! Been too long!”

Aunt Jinny just waved in return, and lengthened her steps a little; Anna had to trot to keep up, and despite the fact that she was feeling better than she had in a long, long time, she started feeling breathless.

Mrs. Holcroft was a tall woman, with yellow hair with just a couple of gray streaks in it done up at the nape of her neck in a knot. She wore a nice sprig-cotton dress in blue and white with a worn white bib apron over it. That dress fabric never came from flour sacks. Anna was very glad she was dressed decently in that nice canvas skirt with a proper shirtwaist and petticoat; if she’d come to visit turned out in the shabby flour-sack gown she’d arrived in, she’d have been mortified.

Not that Mrs. Holcroft seemed to take note even of Aunt Jinny’s outrageous men’s bib overalls. Unlike Mrs. Sawyer, Mrs. Holcroft didn’t seem to care what Jinny and Anna wore.