But Anna would still have been mortified.

Now that they were out of the trees, the sun beat down on them in a way she couldn’t remember ever happening in Soddy. Maybe it was because of all the smoke and soot in the air in Soddy, that thinned out the sunlight. She was hot and uncomfortable when they reached the welcome shelter of the cabin’s cooler kitchen.

The first thing she noticed was that there was no fire in the hearth nor in the stove, and she wondered why. How could you get any cooking done if you had to keep building the fire over and over? The second thing she noticed was that the enormous kitchen was a room all to itself; this huge cabin wasn’t just one big room downstairs, it was partitioned up. The upstairs must be, too. But the Holcrofts weren’t so high-falutin’ as to have a parlor, or that’s where she and Aunt Jinny would have been invited, so the rest of the house probably was made of a workroom and several bedrooms.

There were many cupboards and pantries here, a circle of ladderback chairs at the hearth, and a proper spindle-leg table and set of ladderback chairs around it. The table had a red-and-white checkered oilcloth tablecloth on it.

“Set a spell, I got some’a yore tea right here,” the woman said, nodding at the table and chairs as she picked up a pitcher and began pouring cups of tea—proper pottery cups, not the wooden ones Aunt Jinny used. Without being asked, she dripped some honey into all three. “So, this must be yore sister’s gal?”

“This’s Anna May,” Aunt Jinny confirmed, as they took their places at the table. “Anna, this’s Maddie Holcroft.”

“Please ter meetcher, Missus Holcroft,” Anna said shyly, ducking her head a little.

“Reckon I should make ’er known t’yer,” Jinny continued. “Seein’ as she’s stayin’.”

“Wall, good. I worry ’bout y’all up there all alone,” Mrs. Holcroft said. “I ain’t a-gonna worry iffen y’all got a young gal stayin’.” Aunt Jinny snorted.

“There ain’t nothin’ t’worry ’bout, Maddie,” Jinny retorted. “I’m meaner’n a rattlesnake and sneakier than a panther. Ain’t no man nor beast a-gonna meddle with me.”

“It ain’t man nor beast I’m a-worried ’bout, Jinny. It’s slips of th’ axe, a branch a-rollin’ out from under y’all, and y’all fallin’ an’ crackin yore fool haid, or fallin’ on th’ ice.” Maddie chuckled. “Though hard as thet haid of yores is, prolly no harm ’ud come to y’all.”

“Takes one ter know one, Maddie,” Jinny snickered, and then the two of them were off, chattering away, with Maddie offering gossip about people Anna had never heard of, and Jinny asking about the six Holcroft children. Early on in the gossip session, Maddie offered around a plate of pale yellow sugar cookies. Jinny took one absently. There was nothing absent-minded about the way Anna helped herself, but she did manage to restrain herself to taking only two.

Four of the six Holcroft children were scattered about the farm. One was milking, one was fishing, one was gathering vegetables, and one was chopping wood. The eldest girl was in the “kitchen-shed.” And that explained the cold stove. In summer, people who were well enough off to afford it moved their cooking to a shed attached to, but separate from, the house. Everything that needed heat from a stove or a hearth—baking, stewing, or frying—was done there instead of in the house. Anna had only heard about people well off enough to do this; she’d never actually known anyone who did, herself.