Evangeline had the feeling that Scully would have made the very same purchases even if she hadn’t patched him up and looked after him, but it would have been far too awkward to say so. So she simply repeated something she’d said earlier. “Thank you, Scully.”

He looked at her for a long time, in silence, before replying. “You’re mighty welcome,” he said, at last. Then he lowered his gaze to the pages of his book again.

Eagerly, Evangeline chose a bright blue calico print, measuring it with her eyes. There was more than enough, experience told her, to make dresses for both herself and Abigail. She would start with her daughter’s, that being so much smaller.

With a cheerful heart, she laid the fabric out on the table—a task that required much smoothing and realigning—then got her sewing box out of the trunk and took Abigail’s measurements.

“I declare you’ve grown a full inch just since we left Pennsylvania,” she marveled.

Abigail’s face glowed. “I told you before, Mama. I’m big.”

“Indeed you are,” Evangeline agreed. “Scully told me how you helped him with the chores while I was sleeping.”

The little girl leaned in close, as if to offer a confidence. “I got to ride the mare again. Just to the spring and back. Scully walked alongside, carrying the water buckets.”

“My gracious,” Evangeline said, delighting in her daughter’s joy, even though it frightened her a little to think of the child making that particular trek, even on horseback and in Scully’s company. There were so many things that could happen. “You just keep getting more and more grown up all the time.”

“That’s what I’m supposed to do, Mama.”

“Of course it is.”

“I’m going to look especially pretty in this dress.”

Evangeline suppressed a smile. “It’s all very well to believe in one’s self, Abigail, but you mustn’t be immodest.” Out of the comer of her eye, she saw Scully close his book and set it aside. That done, he went about moving the cot back out to the lean-to. Then, after a brief trip outside, he said good night and retired to the little room at the back of the house.

“It’s real cold in there, Mama,” Abigail confided, looking worried. “Hortense and I pretended it was the North Pole, and we were explorers, and we could see our breaths.”

Evangeline merely nodded. She had begun to cut the fabric by then, and she was intent upon the task.

“Don’t you think Scully should sleep with us? Like last night?”

Evangeline closed her eyes for a moment. The question was entirely innocent, of course, but the thought of Abigail raising such a subject in front of Big John, the McCaffreys, or even in Scully’s hearing, gave her fits.

“No, darling, I don’t,” she said. “That was a very special situation, after all. Mr. Murdoch needed a place to stay, and it was too cold for him to sleep out in the bam, so Scully gave up his bed for the night.”