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Show Page 95 "Where have you been hiding yourself, John?" Cisly asked. "You've not come around much of late." "You know how it is in summer. Too much work for the hours of daylight. Then, too, I'm carving on a chair in my free time. I thought it might make a proper welcoming gift for Harwood when he arrives." "Did you know John has a fine hand for making furniture?" Anne asked me, looking up from her mending. "Are you as good at furniture-making as you are at fishing?" I asked, forcing my lips into a stiff smile. I was pleased to see a small quirk at the corner of John's mouth. "Much better I should hope, since, as I told you, I am a hopeless fisherman. I keep tangling the lines. Still, I have been a fisherman for only a few months, while I apprenticed with a joiner for two years." "I did not know that," said Cisly. "I thought you were in school when you weren't working on your father's land." "When I was twelve, my father decided I had had enough book learning and set me to learn woodworking. I enjoyed it, yet I missed my studies and went about with such a long face my father finally relented and sent me back to school. I was there until I was sixteen, when he died." "How did you come to travel to Virginia?" I asked, my cusiosity overcoming my awkwardness in his presence. |