Instead of stopping what they were doing, the boys glanced up, judged the distance Briar had yet to go, and doubled their efforts to hook the bird. When the hook kept missing, they lowered it further to get the whole hat. They swung the hook once, twice, and hit their target.
“Mrs. Clover,” Briar said as the boys pulled on the string. She reached up and caught the hat, deftly unhooking it. “Oh, look at that wind.” Behind Mrs. Clover’s back, Briar yanked the string out of the boys’ hands, carefully balling it up and tucking the hook into her pocket before holding the prized hat in front of her. “I’ve always admired your Sunday hat. Where did you get it from?”
Mrs. Clover looked a little befuddled, especially with her hair out of sorts from the pull of the hat. “That’s what I get for leaving home without stopping for my hatpin. Thank you, Briar. It is my favorite hat. It was given to me by my Matthew on our honeymoon.”
Briar helped Mrs. Clover adjust her hair and her hat before turning around and looking for the boys. They had already scrambled out of the tree and were running for home. She was about to go after them when Fanny stepped in. “No, no. You go ahead with Henry. I’ll just think of what Prudence would say, and say it twice. She’s always been much better at reining in children.”
Looking at Henry waiting with his cotton sack, then at the running feet of the twins, Briar felt pulled in two directions. She huffed. The boys would be here next weekend, and up to trouble again. She needn’t worry about a missed opportunity to lecture them. Henry, on the other hand, was leaving. If she were to stop him, now was the time.
Chapter Seven
During the walk back to town, the sun began to drop below the mountaintop, casting a warm glow on everything. Briar only noticed because of Henry. With that wistful and contented look of his, he drank in the valley as if memorizing each dip and crest on the land. Whenever he had that Henry look, Briar couldn’t help but try to see what he saw. Was the color green he savored a deeper green than what she saw? Perhaps his ears picked up on sounds more acutely than her ears. Or his skin was more sensitive to changes in the air than hers. She recognized how the breeze was warm with the scent of cedars, but could he taste them as well?
His cotton sack looked too empty for a boy leaving his home, as if he were leaving everything behind. It was filled with food his mother had put in for him. Briar knew because Mrs. Prince repeated what she had packed for him over and over: cheese, bread, sausage, cheese, bread, sausage, as if she couldn’t find the words to tell him what she really meant: Don’t leave. I love you. You’re my only son.
“You think Fanny can keep an eye on those boys?” Henry asked, breaking the silence.
Briar groaned. “You saw?”
“I, myself, have been curious about Mrs. Clover’s hat. I don’t blame them at all for investigating.”
“Well, Mrs. Clover would, had she known what they were doing.”
“I had no idea you were so quick on your feet.”
“With those boys? I have to be.”
“I know you sacrifice a lot for them, Briar, but they won’t be your responsibility forever. They’ll grow up and you will be free to follow your own dreams.”
“It might happen sooner than I like. Nanny only agreed to keep the children until I turned seventeen. That’s this summer, and I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m afraid she’s gone to find homes for them and Fanny is too nice to tell me.”
“Nanny’s not leaving you out of the decision making, Briar. She wouldn’t do that.”
“People do things you don’t expect all the time.” She gave him a playful shove, knocking him off-balance. “See? I never thought she’d leave without at least telling me. How well do you know her?”
He elbowed her back. “I’ve known her all my life, but I don’t know her really well, just, you know, in the way that children know friends of their parents.”
“So, like your family, she’s always lived here?”
Henry smiled. “No. She moved in about the same time you moved here.”
“Really? Good thing, that. No one else would take us.”
“I know how just about every family ended up here. Or at least, my family used to keep track of that sort of thing before too many of the mills moved into town. Now it’s a lot harder to notice the new people with all the comings and goings.”
“So, your family keeps an eye on the valley?”
Henry laughed. “I guess it’s a bit of a game with us. We are observers.”
“Did you notice my family when we first moved here? You and I started the mill at the same time.”
“Of course I noticed you.”
“Lots of girls started work at the mill when I did.”
“Ah, but no others were named Briar Jenny but you.”
“So it’s my name you noticed?”
“It caught my attention.”
“And you were the one who introduced us to Nanny after Da died.”