Rebekah gasped.
Smiling, Peter ducked to catch her eye. “My arm wasn’t so lucky.”
Joseph coughed. “What’d you do after?”
“They don’t want boys at a glass factory once their hands get too big to pack the glass right,” Peter explained as he rolled down his sleeve. He fumbled with the cuff button. “So, after I broke a few pieces, they ran me off.”
Joseph shifted his weight and rubbed his chin much the way Samuel had rubbed his beard in the barn earlier. “Ready?” he mouthed to Rebekah.
She nodded infinitesimally. “Perhaps we should get back and check on your wheel.”
Peter stretched and offered her a roguish smile. “I knew y’all wasn’t related, by the way.” Squinting, he looked her up and down in the obvious manner of the English. “You’re fair. All the rest of these folks is darker.”
Rebekah stared back, curiosity replacing the discomfort. There was something about this Peter O’Leary…
After he adjusted his gun belt, Peter turned to Joseph and offered another faux-tip of his hat. “I ’preciate the conversation.”
He strutted past Rebekah. “Tell your pa I had business in Montgomery. I’ll be back this evening for my wheel.”
***
“He said he’d be back tonight for the wheel,” Rebekah relayed to Samuel as her favorite brother, Jeremiah, passed the bowl of mashed potatoes to each of the younger boys. “Then he got up and left, those little silver things on his heels clinking the whole time.”
“It was an odd conversation,” Joseph agreed. “He kept referring to family he’s never known.”
“Let us pray,” Samuel announced. The table, which had only moments before buzzed with the jovial sounds of a large and hungry family, quieted.
After the blessing, Elnora spoke. “Perhaps it’s best he doesn’t return.”
Joseph’s husky voice sounded harsher than usual. “I agree.”
“Me too,” Jeremiah told his plate.
Rebekah passed Jeremiah the roasted corn. “He should know better than to make a promise, only to break it.”
“Did you finish the wheel, Mr. Stoll?” Joseph’s voice was sincere again.
“Ay, I did. I made it my priority.” He dipped a cup of water from the bucket on the table before offering Joseph the dipper.
“Samuel loves to make woodworking his priority,” Elnora offered in an obvious attempt to change the subject. Her black covering was crisp and spotless despite a smudge of flour below her eye. The hungry buzz returned as bowls, plates, baskets, and dippers were passed to and fro about the table.
Rebekah accepted a bowl of pickled radishes from Jeremiah. After helping herself to a few and passing the bowl on to Joseph, she glanced at the window.
Perhaps Peter is just late.
Unable to let talk of the Englishman end just yet, she piped up once more. “It’s still odd he hasn’t returned for his wheel.”
“That’s the trouble with the English,” Samuel muttered before filling his mouth with a buttery bite of bread.
As she accepted the basket of fresh bread from Joseph, Rebekah glanced out the window again to see if the Englishman had indeed broken his promise to return.
Chapter Three
A choir of hungry boys congregated around the breakfast table as Rebekah came in from milking Butter. The sun had barely begun to peek over the easternmost horizon, but little tummies were already a-rumble in the Stoll household.
“Have you seen Mama?”
“I haven’t seen Mama, have you seen her?”
“I’m hungry. My stomach’s growling.”
“I thought I smelled flapjacks this morning.”
“Someone made flapjacks? Where are they?”
“Who made flapjacks?”
“Can you make us flapjacks, sister?”
Rebekah fielded the flying questions as she set the bucket of fresh milk on the table.
“I’ll get the dipper,” Jeremiah offered with a gap-toothed grin.
“Happy for a break from the chaotic questioning?”
Jeremiah exhaled a breath he had probably held for quite a while.
Ma must be sleeping late. She always gets tired late in her pregnancies.
