He wrapped himself in his top blanket, made his morning trip to the latrine and headed back to the rain-barrel to wash as she came up the hill from the woods and the spring, lugging a full bucket of drinking water. He watched her from the corner of the house and ducked back again for a quick rinse under the dripping-bucket that hung at the corner by the rain-barrel at the back of the cabin.
The cold water made his joints ache and set his teeth to chattering; he wrapped in the blanket and walked—limped, because the shivering made his bad leg uncertain—up onto the porch and back inside.
He shed his blanket then and dressed while she was boiling up a little breakfast tea. She did not look his way, more than a one-time glance and a flinch away from him. She worked with her back turned then—well enough. So she knew she was female.
He shaved, which he did not always; and she gave him tea—a novel and luxurious thing, he thought, to have a warm start on a summer morning. He sat on the porch and sipped his tea while she stirred about cleaning the cabin and rolling up the mats with a zeal for work he found amazing.
A man could get used to that.
But he remembered his resolve about the nuns, and his sound reason for it. When she was finished, and came out onto the porch to report herself ready for other tasks, he said:
"My horse wants watering. You'll find the bucket down by the fence yonder."
He walked down to the stable with her, handed her the bucket and whistled Jiro over to put a tie on his halter.
He fed Jiro himself. The horse had no disposition for waiting for his breakfast; but when Taizu came trudging back with the water he showed her where the grain was and how much to feed and how to latch the bin securely.
He showed her the shovel too, and where to put the manure til the sun could dry it for turning into the garden.
But that was no news to a country girl.
"You know you're planting the squash too close," she said, and with an earnest frown that made him think again that maybe the nuns were a mistake, "And the beans aren't much. You ought to let me pick the seed, master Saukendar. A gentleman wouldn't know the things I do."
But he said to himself that she would be gone before the moon came full.
She seduced even Jiro, after he calmed the horse down enough to get her near him, and he had showed her what to do with the curry comb. She found the spots he liked scratched; and in a little while Shoka, sitting on the rail, saw Jiro standing with his ears flat and his eyes half shut, while the girl worked away at the caked and dried remnant of the mud he had gotten into.
Shoka felt a little betrayed: he had thought Jiro might well put her right over the fence.
But pig-girl that she was, she had the hands, and Jiro even let her work with his forelock and his legs—not the taiclass="underline" Jiro tucked it tight into his rump and she could get only the end-strands brushed, but his kick when she tried to get him to relax it was only perfunctory, a statement of territories. The girl did not even skip out of the way, she just stepped aside in time, and Shoka sat on the top rail with arms on knees and watched with the unhappy thought that Jiro was showing his age—getting a little gray around the muzzle, evidencing more than a little complacency in his retirement.
The girl ducked under Jiro's neck and Jiro did not react; but the girl kept her hand quite properly on Jiro's shoulder as she dodged through, too, the way he had told her to; and Jiro was sun-warmed and lazy.
The girl's help with the chores, Shoka thought, would give him time to do the repairs in the stable, but he was not doing that sitting here and watching, sun-lazy as the horse, be-spelled and letting the lazy daytime flow through his mind, thinking, when he thought at all, that it was a great deal easier just to sit.
He sat on the porch, watched her work and weed; and took the chance finally to repair the stitching on Jiro's bridle, work that agreed with aching muscles and the bruises he had.
And when, in late afternoon, she came up to the house all sweating and with her hair sticking around the edges of her face: "Wash," he said.
She bowed and went in and got the bucket.
"Clean clothes," he said. "And take the water bucket for filling: no need to make two trips."
She bowed again, on her way across the porch, went back and came out again with a change of clothes in the washing bucket, and the empty water bucket in the other hand.
And passed him and stopped at the foot of the steps. "Master Saukendar—shouldn't I take my lesson first?"
"Are you questioning my methods?"
"No, master Saukendar."
"You were panting when you walked up here. You haven't the wind to spare. When you do, there's a slope, up through the trees. Run to the top, run down again. Do it every evening before your bath."
"All right," she said; and set the buckets on the edge of the porch and started off at a jog.
He watched her go, watched her disappear into the trees; and knew himself how high that hill was and what a climb the top was.
He had an idea that she would stay that pace about a stone's throw, and then she would run and walk a little; and finally take the hill at a walk if she had even that strength left.
It would be quite a while, he thought, till she would be back; and he looked at the sky with a little concern: he had no wish to be climbing that hill himself even at a walk, stiff as he was, with the leg giving him trouble, searching for the girl lost in the woods...
No, not that one. She might not make it to the top, but he trusted her to find her way down again. Eventually.
He sat and drowsed on the porch through a gold and lavender sunset and into the edge of dark until he heard running steps coming down the slope; and saw her returning—soaked in sweat, and staggering up to the porch, a pale-faced ghost in the dusk.
But by then he was on his way to the door.
He did not say a thing to her. He walked into the cabin. He heard her drag the buckets off the porch; and he was hungry and annoyed at the prospect of a late supper.
But he hung up Jiro's newly-mended bridle on the peg by the door, lit the solitary lamp and stirred up the coals. He had tea on and the rice simmered with some of the squash from the garden before she came trudging in out of the dark with a bucket of wet clothes and another of drinking water.
"You're late," he said. "I expect supper at dusk."
"Yes, master Saukendar."
"Eat." He dipped up a bowlful and shoved it at her; and she took it with a: "Thank you, master Saukendar," and staggered out to the porch to sit down in the dark, where a breeze made it cooler.
He took his own supper out. "I want my tea," he said.
"Yes, master," she said; and got up after a second try and staggered after it and brought out his cup and hers.
"Eat," he said, when she sat there after, staring at the bowl in her hands and no seeming strength to lift it. "Eat, do we have food to waste?"
She dutifully ate, tiny bite by tiny bite, and did not finish what he gave her. "I'll have it for breakfast," she said.
He scowled at her, finished his, and said, "You can wash the pot before you go to bed."
She nodded, and got up and fetched the pot out of the cabin, staggered off the side of the porch and went around toward the back of the cabin where the rain-barrel stood.
He went inside, stripped down and was comfortable in his bed in the dark cabin by the time she brought the pot in.
She was moving stiffly in the morning, but she stirred out at dawn, while Shoka lay in his blankets and caught a little more rest. When she came back and while she was making breakfast he went out for his own bath at the rain-barrel, shaved at his leisure, and came back to the porch again to find a hot cup of tea.