Ger’s aunt’s name was Melinda Honeybourne, and she was a widow of four years, having taken over the entire management of the Griffin, which they had owned together, after her husband’s death.
She told the two eldest children, who were standing bashfully at the Griffin’s front gate, to look after it and the younger ones, while she climbed into our wagon and came with us “to see our new house.” I picked up the two smallest children and put them in front of me in Greatheart’s saddle.
The house was located beyond the edge of town and isolated from it by the eyeless backs of the village houses, by a few stands of trees left at this far end of town where they were in nobody’s way yet, and by the gentle undulations of the land. Most of the farms lay east of the village in an irregular patchwork of forest and field and stream, on both sides of the main road. Goose Landing lay mostly out of sight beyond the big forested hill to the southwest, with farmlands creeping round its feet and clasping hands at its skirts. The nearest town to the north was Sunnyfield, a three days’ journey, perhaps, through the heavy forest to Blue Hill’s northwest, but no one ever went that way, and it was at least a week’s journey to go around it. Our house’s back was to this great wood that no one passed through.
“Although I’ve no call to say I’ve come to see it, for see it I have many times. Since I could not be certain when you’d finally be coming I’ve been going up once a week, twice when I could manage it, or sending one of the older ones, to open the windows and let some fresh air inside. A closed-up house stales overnight, or nearly, and that’s no proper welcome.” Melinda addressed herself to Grace, who was riding in the wagon. “You’ll find it clean enough to move into, miss, though of course you’ll be wanting to scrub it yourself once you’ve settled. But it’s been boarded up and empty for two years, and the dust was sticky-thick on everything, so Molly—she’s my eldest—and me, we washed everything right well, three months ago, when we heard you were coming for sure. Moving’s a sorry business at best, and it’d make things a bit more comfortable for you. Mind you, though, you’re welcome at the Griffin till you’re fixed up the way you like. I’m used to sudden company for bed and board, and I like it.”
Grace began to thank her for her trouble, but she brushed it away, saying kindly, “And you needn’t worry that you owe us anything, for be sure I’ll take it out of young Ger here when he gets the shop going again. Ah, we’re all delighted to be having our own smith again; it’s a long way from this side of the hill to the Goose forge, you know, and we’re not all of us too pleased with young Henney’s skill besides.
You’ve not forgotten the right ways of doing things, there in that city, now, have you, Ger?”
“No indeed: I’m still as clever as the devil himself,” Ger said, and Melinda laughed; but he’d seen Father wince when she, noticing nothing, had spoken with a countrywoman’s scorn of towns.
The two babies I had collected were named Daphne and Rachel; Daphne was the elder, and would answer direct questions after a long pause spent considering the inquirer’s motives. Rachel said nothing at all, and held on to Greatheart’s mane with both hands. Both of them seemed delighted to be sitting six feet above the ground and not at all frightened, although somewhat annoyed at my desire for conversation.
“There it is,” said Melinda.
The street had faded to a track, which then led vaguely over a small rise in the ground; and there in a shallow dish of a meadow stood a little weather-brown wooden house with a shed beside it, and a smaller shed built out from the larger one. At first sight the house seemed as tiny as a doll’s, delicately carved out of matchsticks, till I realized that this was die effect of the great forest that began only a few hundred feet behind it, with saplings and scrub growing up nearly to its back door. There had once been a fence around a kitchen garden in the back, but it was a jungle of vines and great leafy things gone to seed. A third shed hidden behind the other two we discovered to be a stable, with only two narrow stalls and a leaky roof. There was a well on the small hill we’d come over following the road from the town, but a lovely bright stream jingled its way down from the forest and took a generous bend to be convenient to the forge before it disappeared behind another small hill, heading away from the town.
We had all been dreading this final moment of finding out just what we had come to, and we all took heart at the quiet scene before us. The late-afternoon sun gilded the early-summer green of the meadow, and stained the pink and white daisies to a primrose hue; the buttercups were flame-coloured. The house was neat and sturdy and, as we dismounted at its stoop, contrived to look hospitable. Melinda marched in first, as we stood looking around and at one another, and threw open windows, talking to herself as she did so. She poked her head out of a second-storey window and said, “Hi! Come in! It’s none so bad!” and disappeared again.
She was right. It had been well built, and had survived two years of vacancy with little worse than a few drafts around warped window sills, and a front door that had fallen slightly in its frame and stuck when it was fully closed. The house was a long rectangle, the dividing wall cutting the first floor into two rooms roughly square; the kitchen was at the back and the parlour up front, with a fireplace facing into each room from a central chimney. Upstairs was a hall running half the short length of the house to the chimney, with a bedroom on either side; each had its own tiny fireplace. Up a ladder and through a hole you emerged in a doorway in the peak of the roof, one side of the frame being the chimney again; a wall ran away from you in both directions, cutting the attic in two. The roof sloped sharply on two sides, so the attic rooms were almost triangular; Ger, the tallest of us, could stand up straight only while standing one rung down on the loft ladder.
Everything was beautifully clean; there wasn’t a cobweb to be found, and the first two floors were waxed. Melinda grinned at our lavish compliments and said she’d tell them all again to Molly, who had done most of the work, and was young enough still to take pleasure in wild flattery. We laughed and clattered downstairs again, feeling that we had at least one good friend.
Father insisted chat we unpack at once, and sleep in our new home. “We thank you, my dear,” he said to Melinda, who blushed, “but we have been sleeping on the ground for so long that mattresses on a planed level floor will be a splendid luxury,” but we agreed to come to the Griffin for supper.