The Hired Man. Lynna Banning

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СКАЧАТЬ you know maybe you could ride my bay mare to school,” Cord remarked casually. “I could teach you to ride.”

      “Nah. Ma won’t let me. You heard her. She says a horse is dangerous. Besides, you said it was too much horse for me.”

      “It is dangerous if you don’t know how to handle a horse. You ever been on a horse?”

      Danny shook his head.

      “How long does it take you to walk to school?”

      “Most of an hour. It’s over three miles.”

      Cord nodded. He’d like to see the boy get to and from school faster, if only because Molly was always underfoot when her brother was gone. An extra hour morning and evening could be well spent if Danny was around to entertain the girl.

      After supper that night Cord again raised the subject with Eleanor.

      “Absolutely not,” she said shortly. “He’s too young to manage a big animal like that.”

      “He’s not too young, Eleanor. I told you I learned to ride when I was younger than Molly.”

      “Then your mother was a fool.”

      “My mother was dead. My father was the fool, but he taught me to ride anyway. And hunt and read and write. He even taught me to dance a Virginia reel.”

      Eleanor’s face changed. “Did he really? How extraordinary!”

      “He also taught me how to repair a barn roof, which is what I’m going to do tomorrow. Unless,” he added, “you have something else that needs doing.”

      “Does the barn roof really need fixing?”

      “It does. The holes are so big, at night I can look up and see the stars. Come winter it’ll leak like a sieve.”

      “I take it that you are sleeping up in the loft?”

      “Yeah.” He sighed. “Along with Mama Cat and her kittens.”

      “I think Isaiah slept in one of the horse stalls. He wouldn’t climb the ladder up to the loft. He said it made him light-headed.”

      Cord chuckled. “Then he never knew about the holes in the roof, did he? Or about Mama Cat?”

      “Oh, very well,” she said with a laugh. “Fix the barn roof. I certainly wouldn’t want a wet cat and kittens when the winter rains come.”

      She stood up, untied her apron and hung it on the hook by the stove. “Thank you for making those pies, Cord.” She hesitated. “A man who can not only bake a pie and dance a Virginia reel but repair barn roofs is certainly rare in my book.”

      Cord thought about her remark all the rest of that day. Rare, huh? He’d been called a lot of things in his life, but “rare” wasn’t one of them. Still, he thought with a smile, a man liked a compliment now and then, didn’t he?

      * * *

      It was Saturday, Danny’s School Night. All day the boy moped around the yard with such a long face Eleanor wondered if he was sick. Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer and set aside the basket of green peas she was shelling and stood up on the back porch step. “Danny, are you feeling all right?”

      “Sure, Ma. I guess so. Got something flutterin’ around in my belly is all.”

      Cord looked up from the chicken house, where he was nailing a new roost in place. “Butterflies, huh?”

      “Guess so,” the boy muttered.

      “You have to give a speech or something? That can make a man plenty nervous.”

      Danny perked up at the word man and sent her hired man a pained look. “Yeah. I gotta recite the Bill of Rights from memory and give a speech about it.”

      “Hey, just yesterday you wanted to be ‘all growed up’ so your ma would let you ride a horse,” Cord reminded him. “Part of gettin’ there—” he shot Eleanor a look “—is, uh, standing up to those things that are hard.”

      “Like giving a speech?” Danny muttered.

      “Yeah, like giving a speech.”

      Eleanor sat back down on the step and again started shelling peas. Cord made a good deal of sense at times.

      And then her hired man opened his mouth and spoiled it. “Believe me,” Cord called from the chicken house, “you’re gonna find ridin’ a horse easy after makin’ a speech in public.”

      Her son’s eyes lit up. “Oh, yeah?”

      “Yeah,” Cord said.

      “No,” Eleanor countered. “No horse-riding. Not yet.”

      Cord pounded another nail into the chicken roost, tossed the hammer to Danny and strode across the yard toward her. But instead of starting an argument with her, he asked about her daughter. “Where’s Molly?”

      “She’s in the barn, playing with those kittens.”

      “She’s not near the horse stalls, is she? Or up in the loft?”

      “She is not allowed up in the loft, Cord. I don’t want her falling off that narrow little ladder. And she’s scared to death of horses.”

      “But you trust her, right? She’s sensible enough not to get hurt.”

      “Well, yes. But...”

      “Ma,” Danny called, his voice plaintive. “Do I really have to go to School Night?”

      “Yes,” both she and Cord said together. “You really do. Now, go find Molly and both of you wash up for supper.”

      Thankfully, Cord kept his mouth shut about horses and riding all through her supper of creamed peas on biscuits. When she shooed the children upstairs to put on clean clothes, Cord went out to the barn to hitch up the wagon.

      Upstairs in her bedroom, Eleanor quickly sponged off her face and neck and donned her blue gingham day dress. She was the last to descend the front porch steps.

      She felt as nervous as Danny. All her life she had disliked public gatherings. Her mother had criticized her for being shy, but Eleanor knew better. She was not just shy; she was frightened of people, especially crowds of people. Somehow she felt she never “measured up,” in her mother’s words.

      Cord took one look at her, jumped down from the driver’s seat and lifted her onto the wagon bench beside him. Before he picked up the reins he leaned sideways and spoke near her ear.

      “You all right, Eleanor? You look white as milk.”

      “I’m fine,” she said shortly. “Just a little scared.”

      “Scared about what?”

      She twisted her hands in her lap and looked everywhere СКАЧАТЬ