Leaving Frey, happily munching on what looked like very good hay, full of grain and green goodness, and a basin newly filled with water, I headed back inside.
The boys had gotten up and were already sitting at the table eating mounds of pancakes. Had I been gone that long? Whoops. Soon, I’d be fixing their breakfasts. I’d have to get up earlier so I could deal with Frey’s needs before theirs.
Mrs. Penn handed me a plate of the cakes. Yummy. I sat down to eat, unfortunately right next to the officer, who was just finishing his batch.
“You smell like horse,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t go for a ride,” I apologized.
The boys stopped cramming in their forkfuls of pancakes to give me a cheerful smile. “We don’t mind,” Frances said.
“Yeah, horse smells good,” Carlo added.
“We’ll have to get you some special riding clothes,” Mrs. Penn said. “I tossed your old ones. They were completely worn out.”
The news that my clothes were gone panicked me. I had no money. I’d been in such a hurry to get away, I stupidly hadn’t even taken the time to dig up my jar with the coins I’d managed to save. What would I do without my old clothes? How could I get a job with nothing but what I was wearing, which now, apparently, smelled of horse?
I nodded. What could I say? I’d planned to wash them today, but now . . . I’d be in debt more to whatever funds this was all coming from. I hated the feel of that. It was just like back in the village where I’d been saddled with debts that could never be completely paid off. How much did a person owe for being housed and fed for six months in twenty different houses?
But at least that debt was ended with their rock throwing episode. If they’d managed to kill me, I wouldn’t have been able to work, so I figured I now owed them nothing. That seemed more than logical. Besides, that’s what the judge had said. He’d told me not to work for them anymore, or at least, not to work for them for free.
Wasn’t it strange how everything good seemed to carry thorns?