The Seven Markets Read Online Free Page B

wonderful. And you seem so nonchalant. Do it one more time, won’t you?”
    His face spoke his feelings plainly enough: I’ve created a monster. “No no,” he said. “Hadn’t you best be off for home?” He sniffed the air, nostrils flaring, the great bushy mustache inflating as he did so. “Dinner’s almost ready. You’d best be off.”
    Ellie started to argue—she wanted to remain out here on the road with him all night and all day tomorrow—but she saw an easier path than arguing.
    “Do you still need help?”
    He mused and told her he had it pretty well sorted out. “Once you factor out ’lectricity it’s a relatively easy line to draw.”
    “I could come in the morning,” she said, undeterred. “I could help you sort out what stays and what goes. You don’t even have to pay me. I’d be happy to help out, honestly.”
    She saw him perk up at the idea of enlisting her services at no cost to himself and knew he would agree.
    “Very well. But—stop bouncing like that—I like to sleep in after a long journey and I like my morning tea. So I don’t want to see hide nor hair of you until I’m good and settled in.”
    “Perfect,” Ellie said.
    “Now away home with you.”
    “Yessir,” Ellie said. “But I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    “Not until after tea.”
    “Not until after tea, yessir.”
    He grumbled some, clanking away inside his wagon. Ellie understood that was his way of ending the conversation. She thanked him, bid him good night, and hurried away home, hoping to arrive before dinner became cold.

    She arrived home in time to help with dinner—it was earlier than it felt. Ellie expected her parents to have a score of questions relating to the late hour and how she had occupied her afternoon, but they surprised her by almost doggedly avoiding the subject. Papa bragged about how much work he’d gotten done that day, talking like he’d been alone out in the fields and not with Tom Johnson and three other men he’d hired for the season.
    “Will you have much work tomorrow, Papa?”
    “Enough,” he said. “But we’re ahead, and will get further ahead, and when the Market arrives, we’ll be ready.” He scooped a forkful of food into his mouth and looked down to find his plate very nearly empty. Ellie watched as he filled it with heaping portions of meat and vegetables and broke off a thick hunk of the bread she’d brought from town the day before.
    He continued describing his busy day, lingering on an especially harrowing adventure he’d had clearing a rock from a stubborn patch of soil. Ellie was ashamed to find her attention wandering. She was mindful of her Papa and did not find his story uninteresting, but whenever she let her focus waver the slightest bit, she returned to that spot of road and the short man’s wagon and all the wonders he carried within.
    “I met a man today bound for the Market,” she said, unable to contain herself any longer.
    “A traveler?” Mama said, looking up from her plate.
    “A merchant.”
    “Was he . . . ?”
    “I don’t know, Mama,” Ellie said. “He barely rose above my waist, but his manner was strange.”
    “Did you give him your name?”
    “No, Mama. You know I know better.”
    Mama nodded, satisfied, and returned to her meal.
    Papa spoke between mouthfuls. “What’d you speak about, this odd little man and you?”
    “He had questions,” Ellie said. “He seemed unsure of his location—he had the day wrong and was fussing greatly—and had questions about several items up for sale.”
    “Some of his own items?”
    “Yes, Papa.”
    “How odd. Wouldn’t you think a merchant should know his own inventory?”
    “What sorts of items?” Mama said.
    Ellie shook her head. “I don’t know exactly. One was a lantern that required neither oil nor taper. Another was a rounded, silver box about this large”—she indicated the size with her hands—“which he claimed made music. He called it an eye pod .”
    Papa raised a single