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Show Page 79 "Aye, you were correct about that," Anne concurred, looking down at her calloused hands with their broken, ragged fingernails. "But work does not seem so hard when you share it with one you love and when you work on your own land for your own good. Mayhap you'll know for yourself one day." I thought Anne was going to chide me again for refusing Richard Kean. Yet she said nothing more. A turkey gobbled somewhere in the trees. "May I tell you a secret?" I asked, the sound of Cisly's steady chopping punctuating my words. "Of course. If not to me, then to whom?" smiled Anne. "Someday I, too, will have my own land." "Why Sarah," teased Anne. "Have you set your eye upon a landowner living in our plantation?" I shook my head, exasperated. Was marriage the only way Anne knew to acquire land? "I am going to buy it," I explained. I knew there was a note of defiance in my voice, as though I dared Anne to tell me it couldn't be. Again she was silent. "Have you money?" she asked finally "Nay. But I shall earn it. I will earn some from the ten pounds of tobacco I receive for tutoring each child. And I intend to sell soap ashes to earn more. A hundred weight brings six to eight shillings." "And where will you get the soap ashes?" |