Sarah Mayfield by JS Anthony

Author:JS Anthony [Anthony, JS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-04-09T03:00:00+00:00

15

“They should come to dinner as well,” Sarah told Grady.

“But we’re just married,” he said. When she’d been just married to Jacob, they sat down to dinner every night with a house full of people and it hadn’t bothered them at all. In truth, it had been a comfort. She considered the fact also that being alone with Grady came too many times in the day and night already.

“They work hard,” she said. “Don’t they deserve a decent meal?” She wanted to say, Aren’t they family?

“I see your point,” Grady said, and he was sure he did, but he felt as well that he was losing something.

Sarah served roast chicken for dinner. When the meal ended with a peach tart, she invited them for breakfast. At a breakfast of sausage, eggs and beans, she invited them for dinner and couldn’t help but notice the huge smiles on their faces.

“If Jim’s truly gonna give up what he calls cooking,” Booker said, “then we might all live to see a better day.”

Sarah fell easily into her own chores. Abraham, when he wasn’t out riding with the men, tutored her in the ways of the pigs and the goats. She took a more careful inventory of the smokehouse, pantry and root cellar. Abraham told her that a neighbor, old Tom, had planted the original acre of kitchen garden for Ellen, then Booker had added to it. Tom and some of his sons helped with the harvests, and sowing the corn and winter wheat, and he had a team of field horses to do the plowing.

Why aren’t we growing cotton, for chrissake? Grady had asked of no one, then added bitterly, Might as well be, we’re growing everything else.

Sarah walked row after row of the garden, taking mental notes of what to use, keep, plant more of, make room for, and store up for the winter. What to put up, dry, pickle, turn into something else. Such bounty, potatoes, peppers, onions, beans, peas, greens, herbs, turnips, parsnips, watermelons, the list went on and on. Ellen had surrounded herself with riches that were worth far more than gold, though it was through the gold that she’d acquired them. Her money was put to its best use, Sarah decided, all of it that had been spent in this way.

After the long days of chores, Sarah took to riding Tess in a different direction every afternoon. She had made the mounting and dismounting easier by cutting off several inches of both skirt and petticoats and redoing the long hem with tiny running stitches that she squinted at by candlelight somewhere in the middle of the night. Still not sleeping well? Grady had asked her and she had to admit that no, sleep would not come to her sometimes until almost dawn. She refused to be exhausted, however. There were too many things that needed to be done.

Now that the men had moved the cattle to the hills for the summer, they were in the process of moving the sheep to the fields where the cattle had been.

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