Cottage, with the reassuring sound of her sisters’ breathing by her side. It’s only a dream. But why do I dream of a terrible monster waiting for me, only for me?
Jeweftongue gained her first commission to make fine shirts, for the family who held the Home Farm. “She bought two of my rough shirts for her husband a little while ago and said at the time that the work was far too good for farm clothes. Oh dear! It’s just what I want to believe, you see.”
“Home Farm?” said Lionheart. “Maybe the squire’ll hear of you and order a dozen brocade waistcoats.”
“Oh, don’t!” said Jeweltongue. “I want it too badly. The squire has a big family, and they like good clothing. Mrs Bestcloth has already told me.” Mrs Bestcloth was the draper’s in Longchance. “She says they’re the only reason Longchance even has a draper’s and that someday one of them will be in when I am, and she’ll introduce me.” Jeweltongue buried herself in her task, sitting by the window while daylight lasted, drawing closer to the fire as dusk fell. Their one lamp lived at her elbow; Lionheart grumbled about cooking in the dark, but not very loudly. All three sisters resisted the temptation to stroke the good fabric Jeweltongue was working on and remember the old days.
But Lionheart had begun to grow restless. She had thrown herself into rebuilding the second shed to be marauder-proof, so they did not have to bring Lydia and the chickens indoors at night—“Just before I went mad,” said Jeweltongue, who was the one of the three of them who minded most about a clean house and therefore did more than her fair share of the housework. Then Lionheart built Ihem a new and magnificently weatherproof privy—“Please observe that all my joins join,’’ she said—and finished clearing the meadow round the cottage so it was a meadow again. Beauty had helped with both shed and privy, but she was more and more absorbed in reclaiming the garden, which didn’t interest Lionheart in the slightest; and Lionheart was, indeed, enjoying herself, although her hurling her materials round and swearing at her tools when she had not skill enough to make them do what she wanted might have led anyone who knew her less well than her sisters to believe otherwise.
But there were no more major projects to plunge into and grapple with. Lionhcatt trimmed the encroaching undergrowth back a little from the track that led from the main way to their cottage; but after that she was reduced to chopping wood for their fires—and this late in the year they only needed the one fire for cooking—and the cooking itself, which was necessarily plain and simple and which she had furthermore grown very efficient at. “Who wants to be indoors in spring anyway?” she muttered. “Maybe I’ll apprentice myself to a thatcher.”
One morning she disappeared.
“Oh, my lords and ladies, what will she get up to?” said Jeweltongue, but she had her sewing to attend to. Beauty spent the day in the garden, refusing to think about anything but earth and weeds and avoiding being torn to shreds by the queer thorny bushes which there were so many of around Rose Cottage.
Lionheart returned in time to have the last cup of tea, very stewed, from the teapot, and to get supper. “Where have you been?” said Jeweltongue.
“Hrnm?” said Lionheart, her eyes refocusing from whatever distant menial picture she had been contemplating. “Mrnm. Don’t you grow awfully bored just looking at one stitch and then the next stitch and then the next? I have been giving you something to distract you, by worrying where I was,” replied Lionheart, but, before Jeweltongue could say anything else, added, “Have you met our local squire yet? Or his sister? The sister is the one you want to put yourself in the way of, I would say. She looks to be quite vain about her dresses.”
“Lionheart, you didn’t!” said Jeweltongue in alarm.
“No, no, I didn’t,” said Lionheart. She dropped her voice so their father, dozing in his chair by the fire, would not hear her. “What would I say? ‘Good day, sir, in the old days my father wouldn’t have let you black his boots, but now my sister would be glad of a chance to make your waistcoats? For a good price, sir, please, sir, our roof needs rethatching’?” Lionheart’s careless tone did not disguise her bitterness, nor did her sisters miss the glance she gave to her hands. In the old days they had all had lady’s hands; even the calluses Lionheart had from riding were smooth, cushioned by the finest kid riding gloves, pumiced and lo-tioned by her maid. Lionheart raised her eyes and met Beauty’s across the table. “I know that look,” said Lion-heart. “What sororal sedition are you nursing behind that misleadingly amiable stare?”
“I am wondering what you thought about the squire’s sister’s horse,” said Beauty.
Lionheart laughed. “It’s the right target, but your arrow is wide. The squire’s sister drives a pair of ponies oider and duller—although rather belter kept—than those farm horses we brought here, and the squire himself rides a square cobby thing suitable to his age and girth. But if you had asked about the squire’s eldest son’s horse ...”
“What?” said Jeweltongue. But Lionheart refused to be drawn. She stood up from the table and began to bang and clatter their few pots and pans, as if to drown out any further questions. Finally Jeweltongue said: “Have a little care. Mrs Oldhouse says the tinker will not be here again for months.”
Their father woke up, stared bemusedly at the cup of now-cold tea sitting at his elbow, and went back to musing over his pen and scribbles. “May I make you some fresh tea, Father?” said Lionheart, guiltily caught mid-clash.
“No. no, my dear, I am not thirsty,” he said absently; then he looked up. “You have been away, have you not? We missed you at lunch. Have you had an interesting day?”
A smile Lionheart looked as though she would repress if she could spread across her face. “Yes, Father, a very interesting day,” she replied.
“Stop making those absurd grimaces,” said Jeweltongue with asperity. “You look like you have bitten down on a mouthful of alum.”
Lionheart was very thoughtful for the next few days, and while Jeweltongue tried a few times to wheedle something further out of her—with no success whatsoever—Beauty fell that if Lionheart had decided to tell them nothing, then nothing was what they would be told, and declined to help wheedle. Furthermore, she was by now too preoccupied with her garden to think long about anything else.