Susannah asked Zalia how she kept the chickens out of the stuff, and the woman laughed ruefully, blowing hair back from her forehead. “With great effort, that’s how,” she said. “Yet the madrigal does grow, you see, and where things grow, there’s always hope.”

What Eddie liked was the way it all seemed to work together and produce a feeling of home. You couldn’t exactly say what caused that feeling, because it was no one thing, but—

Yeah, thereis one thing. And it doesn’t have anything to do with the rustic log-cabin look of the place or the vegetable garden and the pecking chickens or the beds of flowers, either.

It was the kids. At first Eddie had been a little stunned by the number of them, produced for his and Suze’s inspection like a platoon of soldiers for the eye of a visiting general. And by God, at first glance there looked like almost enough of them to fill a platoon…or a squad, at least.

“Them on the end’re Heddon and Hedda,” Zalia said, pointing to the pair of dark blonds. “They’re ten. Make your manners, you two.”

Heddon sketched a bow, at the same time tapping his grimy forehead with the side of an even grimier fist. Covering all the bases, Eddie thought. The girl curtsied.

“Long nights and pleasant days,” said Heddon.

“That’s pleasant days and long lives, dummikins,” Hedda stage-whispered, then curtsied and repeated the sentiment in what she felt was the correct manner. Heddon was too overawed by the outworlders to glower at his know-it-all sister, or even really to notice her.

“The two young’uns is Lyman and Lia,” Zalia said.

Lyman, who appeared all eyes and gaping mouth, bowed so violently he nearly fell in the dirt. Lia actually did tumble over while making her curtsy. Eddie had to struggle to keep a straight face as Hedda picked her sister out of the dust, hissing.

“And this ’un,” she said, kissing the large baby in her arms, “is Aaron, my little love.”

“Your singleton,” Susannah said.

“Aye, lady, so he is.”

Aaron began to struggle, kicking and twisting. Zalia put him down. Aaron hitched up his diaper and trotted off toward the side of the house, yelling for his Da’.

“Heddon, go after him and mind him,” Zalia said.

“Maw-Maw, no !” He sent her frantic eye-signals to the effect that he wanted to stay right here, listening to the strangers and eating them up with his eyes.

“Maw-Maw, yes, ” Zalia said. “Garn and mind your brother, Heddon.”

The boy might have argued further, but at that moment Tian Jaffords came around the corner of the cabin and swept the little boy up into his arms. Aaron crowed, knocked off his Da’s straw hat, pulled at his Da’s sweaty hair.