At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [18]
As she traced it with her fingers Pearl said softly, “Tell me again, Mother. Tell me our story.” And so Mother told again the story of the emissary of the king who had come to Virginia long ago with the flying horse embroidered on his wool cloak, so that everyone would know he was a nobleman from the king, and how he wrapped his newborn baby in the cloak and went off to fight the Indians, and was killed and never came back, and how for years and years the cloak had been passed down through Mother’s family until it got so worn-out all that was left was the embroidered horse.
And she always ended the story by saying, “And one day you will pass this down to your daughter, little Pearl, so that she will never forget where she came from.”
But Pearl worried that the scrap of cloth, which seemed to be getting smaller with each generation, would be too small to see by then, and the beautiful flying horse would be gone. So her heart leapt with joy when, as her mother finished the story this time, she looked thoughtfully at all the treasures in the box again, and said, “Do you know, sweet Pearl, I believe you may be right. These scraps and pieces are doing no good locked away in this box where the moths can get them. Let’s make our own story quilt, and you can start the center square.”
4
Discoveries
“I don’t know why I have to be the one to dig up the rocks,” Lori said, poking at a knot of granite with the tip of her shovel.
Noah, who was chopping at the ground with a hoe a few yards ahead of her, favored her with a disparaging scowl over his shoulder. “If you’re having trouble working that shovel, you can come up here and work this hoe. What kind of girl don’t know how to dig a hole, anyway?”
“The kind who’d rather get her workout in a gym,” Lori grumbled, but Noah either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He went back to swinging the hoe, breaking up the weeds and root-webbed ground, and Lori resignedly dug her shovel into the ground and turned up another rock.
They had been at the chore of clearing the garden spot for almost two hours, and Lori was dismayed by how little ground had actually been cleared. While Noah went ahead of her, turning over earth with the hoe, her job was to gather up the big clods of grass and weeds and carry them to the wheelbarrow, as well as dig up the rocks when the hoe struck one, and carry those to the wheelbarrow. When the wheelbarrow was full, Noah would roll it to the edge of the woods and dump it. Even though it had sounded like a fair division of labor when Bridget had first spelled it out, Lori soon began to suspect she had gotten the worst of the job. Her short denim overalls, stylishly accented with rhinestones on the back pockets, were smeared with mud, her work boots were clogged with it, and her leather work gloves were grimy and damp. She wore a wide-brimmed straw garden hat over her long copper braid, which only made her sweat. Moreover, every time the hoe opened up a section of ground, it seemed as though another swarm of tiny insects clouded the air. It was miserable.
“This is why man invented the plow,” she said, heaving the rock out of the ground and carrying it, double-handed, to the wheelbarrow.
“Will you stop your griping? It ain’t that hard. Half the plot is already cleared from last year. If you’d shut up and work we’d have this done before noontime.”
Now it was Lori’s turn to scowl as she waved away a cluster of gnats. “What’s your hurry? Have you got an appointment?”
“Gotta get your taters and peas in the ground before St. Paddy’s Day, or you won’t get a crop.”
“Who told you that?”
He tossed a sneer over his shoulder. “Everybody knows that.”
Lori carried more grass clumps to the wheelbarrow. “You know why she’s making us do this, don’t you? It’s The Little Red Hen all over again.”
“What hen?” He did not look around. “We ain’t got no chickens.”
She made a grimace of impatience. “You know, the