“Basket?” Titus focused his bright brown eyes on her. Timothy bent over the basket and pulled aside the cloth covering.
“Timothy, wait for Miss Ann.” Eve scolded, removing the boy’s fingers by picking him up and settling him on her hip.
Ann crossed the room and sat on a ladder-back chair at the table. “Sit down.” She instructed. The children sat in a semi-circle at her feet. Excitement vibrated from the children. Ann noted their delight and gave up the chair to sit across from them on the floor. She set the basket before them. “Open it.”
A gust of wind from the door opening helped Timothy with the cloth.
“What is it?” Eve’s gray eyes widened.
“Ye remember the story of Noah?”
The boys pulled out an animal in each hand.
Eve shook her head, and slid the basket closer. “Were they yers when ye were little?”
“I made them for ye.”
“Ye made all these yerself?”
“She sure did.” Reed pulled up a chair next to the boys on the outskirts of the circle. “May I see?”
Titus placed Noah in Reed’s hand.
A grin slowly crept across Reed’s face as he took in the little figure. “‘Ye can tell a man by the grain, and ye can’t see the grain until ye remove the bark’.”
Her grandfather’s words, often whispered in her mind, sounded more profound when spoken by Reed as he investigated her work. Inordinately pleased that he’d remembered her Grandfather, the warmth in Reed’s gaze skittered her heart.
“Will ye stay for the noon meal, Mr. Archer?” Dorcas asked over the children.
Ann sought Reed’s face to see how he would answer in time to see his own silent inquiry of her willingness to stay. “Ann?”
“I would love to stay.”
A corner of his lips raised. “If ye’re sure ye have enough.”
Dorcas nodded her approval and spun toward the door that led to the kitchen. “Eve,” she called over her shoulder, “keep them from the fire.”
“Would ye care to see the farm?” Richard rose from his place at the table.
Reed offered his hand to assist Ann from the floor, a look of triumph in his eyes. She took it and tried to ignore the tingles that came alive at his touch. “I will help Dorcas in the kitchen.”
Reed turned back to Richard. “Lead on.”
Ann stood on the threshold of a small square building. “What smells so delicious?”
“Beef.” Dorcas wrestled the roast from the spit in the large stone fireplace that dominated the left wall.
“What can I do?”
“There’s bread in the oven up top—”
Ann grabbed a towel and a stool to reach the stone enclave that was just a hair out of comfortable range. By the time Ann had the bread on the large work table, Dorcas was slicing the roast.
“I had no idea Richard and Reed were friends.”
Dorcas kept her focus on the meat. “They’ve corresponded all the time Mr. Archer has been away.”
“For some reason, I think I should have known that.”
“I don’t know why ye would. ‘Tis a personal thing between them.”
Ann felt chastised though Dorcas’s tone held no such sanction. “Yes. Of course it is. It’s just that with Richard’s leg and…” she let the thought drift. She no longer quite knew what she meant.
“Holding on to things ye can’t change makes for a miserable life.”
“Of course, I guess I thought—”
“The bigger the grievance the bigger the deliverance from misery.”
Ann said nothing.
“Do ye not believe in forgiveness, Miss Ann?”
“Of course I do. I mean Richard is lame, and I guess I thought that’d he’d think of it every time he walked.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Richard is thankful to be lame. But he has told me that if he hadn’t a-been slowed down, he never would have caught me.” A pink rose to her cheeks and a soft light lit her translucent brown eyes. “All things have a purpose.”
A crusty covering broke free from Ann’s heart as her friend’s words took root there. It struck her that she’d never seen Richard in a bad humor. Each time she’d visited her friends, she’d found contentment and joy. “How have we never spoken of this before?”
