Yellow Butterflies
by a.barnhurst

1​

The existential, exquisiteness of a ripe perfect momentary experience, that range of reality when one pleads, hopes, maybe starts to expect, that the warmth and peace of it will never depart; but always beside them, even stored deep and safely in one’s pocket, brought to evocation and unfolding in the duration of the world’s infinite, individual barriers of aches, oppression, and toil. The birds raptured in a frenzy, greeting each other, calling for nourishment, or sang about all the sweetness of new presences in their hatchlings, now growing and chirping in a way that forgot, at last, the deadness of winter. Damp, frisch, anew, trademarks of spring’s fey premier cavalcade of marvels.  The rooster sounds sweltered cries for the onset of a person’s agreeable, usual non-monumental rigor, and Abraham, unflinchingly, picked himself up again out from off the convenience of lying in wait between a mattress and blanket.  Neatly arrayed at the foot of his bed, lay an old pair of grey stockings and breeches.  He heaved them securely on, noticing slight frays in the linen above his knees, evidence of the five years since he bought any new article of clothing to replace the dwindling usefulness of those he owned.  In the past year, he witnessed the hushed rapid progression of these habiliments in the pre-desperate phase of the wearing and tearing process. Did a breadth of capacity reside in him, large enough to produce a proper income for replacements for such necessities as clothing before he wore them to overt signs of financial failure that showed forth by complete fissures and fraying in overused shirts, pants, or even children’s dresses and blouses?   

A putting on a pair of shoes, a staring off straight into the wall with a healthy exhale, and a splash of cold water from a wooden pail nearby for his face, hair, and arms.  For his daughters, he upheld obligations to daily taking care of their animals, amateur cooking, dotting on the household interior and contents in makeshift order, and occasional extras such as picking weeds. And he prodded them with only a side addition for lending support now and again from his solitary confinement of plowing and planting.  A withering winter stand-still of simplistic chores audaciously passed and brought the encouraging and eagerly anticipating facets and transitions of organizing, tilling, and deeper adjustments to eradicate the collected grime and soil to the house and parts of clothing, and all this in a bustling commencement.  

He left the chilly bedroom to a short hallway and onto the center of the home that sent warm threads of smoke up and out into the open space and crackled with a constant blaze of fire from the area's enormous hearth. His oldest daughter already descended by ladder, from the loft above, and busied herself with necessary formulations in that distinctly common operative quarter. Warding off the daylight's opening temperature, she used her mother’s handmade woolen shawl and tugged its wrappings around her shoulders.  And with both hands, she pushed together and patted down a sticky mesh of flour, butter, milk forming biscuit dough.   

“Good morning, dear child,” Abraham acknowledged her with optimism, while bending down and chucking a few bars of wood in the brick fireplace, causing small noises and thuds to emanate the stillness of a vibrant calm.   

The conclusion of a full length of four seasons had not passed since tails of vast lands became a nascent reality when Abraham Beacher stepped from a fine wooden sailing ship, and onto Virginia soil. Prior to that significant change, Abraham and his brother, Thaddeus, both carried-on aspiring together in a south English hamlet. There, in that farther, aloof past, they inherited a handsome sum of money from the venue of a deceased grandfather, who found wealth as a London elite craftsman in the wig making industry.  Abraham used the sudden capital to purchase a mill, and then processed wheat from a large area of farms. It turned out a nice profit, and he soon added to that well-being by marrying one for whom he pinned, a Miss Mary Lowe.   

Thaddeus wrote to Abraham years later, unrestrained in his regard for prospects in the colonies. This far away brother veered in a distinctively alternate direction buying himself six hundred unsettled, colonial acres. His missive collaborations begged Abraham to relocate his pigmy of a household and put forth the skills the brothers learned in their youth as simple cultivators of the soil.  Rather than heeding his brother’s words, Abraham, overtime steadily grew his business in England, and he yielded sensitively to his wife’s attachment to her mother, father, and homeland.  Poor weather and dishonest associates shattered the business’ surging productive amplitude, and then Mary caught influenza, and soon after they buried her beneath the earth in a quaint cemetery.  The heavily burdened Abraham, fell again upon Thaddeus’ written urgings, and decided he and his three daughters needed a revised new step in considering remedies for moving forward from the loss of their mother.  When he arrived in May, in the late decade of the seventeen-forties, and searched for Thaddeus, he found that he’d gone out with a group to explore the Appalachian Mountains, and nobody had seen or heard from him for many years.   

  .   

“Certainly, Anne has developed some ailments,” Helen said in a willingness to better proceed innocently erect, abstaining and mollifying any prickly repining. “Did you not notice that persistent cough of hers before bed?  It might be better for everyone, if she just stayed marginally well…. And you told me to never wake up, Leah. She’ll join me soon enough.” 

“You're doing fine,” he reached down and gave her a sudden kiss to her cheek, “I’ll take care of milking the cow this once, and you worry about the goat after breakfast.  Mind you, take a break if you start catching something. I can’t have two girls so very ill.” Helen shook her head distractedly tepid, caused by her movements and a youthful putting down cut out biscuits, wincing to watch a few lost to the flames.  Helen wiped her flour encrusted hands on her apron, with yet some dusty flecks sticking on her hands, and continued to assemble a few other viands with suppressed guilt from divided attention that impaired her listening. Her thoughts considered the proximity for which she and her sisters slept in the attic, and labored together beneath the sky, how easy under these conditions to receive, then detect any range of congruent symptoms. 

Abraham moved onward, slapping on a dark felt black hat, and grey coat to prepare for passing onward to the barn. “I watch you with reminiscence of what a lucky father I am. To have a remarkable young woman, my Helen, wise beyond your years. I couldn’t do this without you.” 

After the door shut, Helen heard squeaky steps descending from the loft, until a very awake, energetic fledgling Leah bound into the room. “Helen! Helen!” she repeated in enraptured innocence. “Helen, I must show you my funny faces.” 

“Hush, Leah, Anne must rest,” she handed Leah perfectly formed biscuits for baking upon a rack by the fire.  “Careful around the flames, don’t let the fire jump out and get you.”   

“Look, watch me,” Helen glanced over to see her unwavering, amused sister tugging at the skin on the side of her eyes, and blowing her cheeks up as big as she could, mouth wired shut.  Then with a loud burst, she slapped the ballooned cheeks, allowing the air from her mouth to rupture in one loud burst, and then a brief giggling. 

“Hush,” Helen repeated, and swiftly turned to wiping the counter to hide her amusement.  A cyclical phenomenon unfolded, for which asking Leah to whisper, lasted five minutes, and then with each new phrase her volume slowly increased, climaxed, and Helen put out another prompt to lessen the volume.  

“I had a dream last night. So let me tell you everything,” Leah rambled. “We played fairies in the woods, you, Anne, and I. And Peter, the frog, hopped into my pocket.  He told me---” 

“The frog talked?”  

“Yes, Peter the frog.  The frogs in the woods tell me lots about the world—Peter, Rover, Belvida,” she pointedly explained.  “In my sleep Peter told me if I walked upstream, fairy jewels were hiding in the water…I started to walk up the river, but then…I don’t ever remember seeing anything in my sleep.  Do you think if we went and looked at the river, we might find the jewels?” 

“No, Leah,” replied Helen. “You're telling a lot of nonsense.”  

“Well, I am going to follow the run that leads to the James to see…just in case.” 

“We’ve got to make bread, pick strawberries, gather eggs, and then mostly---father told us to clean the barn.  We’re out of marmalade, and nearly out of bread.  Everyone can’t starve because you need a nonsense speculating exploration,” Helen jabbered out the logic, though watching Leah’s desire for felicitous freedom and entertainment gave her a writhing and festering crestfallen apology and tempting challenge to her chafing of duty.  “You and I need to spend our doing things around here,” she closed with merely a restricted playful tapping on Leah’s nose. 

With the local magistrates and county neighbors, Abraham stumbled onto his brother Thaddeus Beacher’s property and home, an old fashioned, quaint waddle and daub dwelling, topped with a questionable thatched roof, Abraham felt certain to expect trouble soon advancing from the top, in that it not capable of keeping the elements out.  Naturally, he supposed his brother built the basic dwelling.  An unseen burden of sadness struck the girl’s father on the original going. They discovered two grubby bowls stationed in the table, a stack of animal skins, farming tools, a store of grain, and items that appeared as if the brother left with having frozen his livelihood.  Red paint covered the sealings, including a central jetting beam that weaved through the house; evidence of meager efforts Thaddeus did of pushing for a measure of aesthetic appeal on the variety of main floor areas. The family’s journey of promise disappointedly curtailed, incomplete without that expected reunion that Thaddeus and Abraham imagined.  Using the letter written by his brother, a local judge granted permission for Abraham to remain in the house for lodging and producing on the land.   

The garret space opened triangularly above a broader spread-out bedroom, nook, and the front room parlor that functioned so definitely as to provide a space for promulgating and reinforcing affiliations.  All of it is just the right size for a colonial adventurer, with a conglomeration of relationships, and no family.  Abraham questioned whether after he and the girls settled in for a couple of years, that he may create something slightly grander and more accommodating of their needs.  Perhaps also in his deep want of Thaddeus’ here with him once more, he attempted to continue clearing and cultivating the land with the possibility they may come together to continue. First in basic subsistence farming, after which, he considered plans of experimenting with growing tobacco for income, as many of the inhabitants around swore to it as a way of collecting an adequate fortune.   

  “I want to eat,” Leah said methodically within her assistance.  This concept of no food without sufficient efforts to increase the repository happened to be among the strict curriculum Leah learned in her developing psyche.  The Beacher’s discovered the colony brought several inescapable scars of minimal to no such provisions. Originally and still, repressed by the lack of skill, three young girls spent enough in the pursuit of distractions of daydreaming and pleasure that contributed to the shortage. The generosity of Virginian neighbors gave them just enough to survive, ingredients that require additional efforts to manipulate into any kind of edible meal.  Leah, even at four, knew firsthand the immediate problems from flaunting practical production, and from such, easily contributed to securing its accomplishments. 

“Perhaps…not the river today, Leah,” Helen herself quickly became the mother since the death of their own. “Well, maybe…If we hurry…We might be able to search the stream quickly for this treasure.”  The role suited her well and made for experience that matured her far more rapidly than any of them.  Despite the position as the oldest of three motherless girls, she clawed and yearned for the holding on what she could to the deflations of the childish youthfulness stifled within. “Oh, no I forgot, Anne.  I don’t want her to cough worse.  I think we ought to take it slow, enjoy setting the barn right, and then go tomorrow”. 

“No, no, we won’t enjoy the barn. We don’t know what to do to make it just right. And we hate so much hay everywhere…and the horrible smell,” exclaimed Leah desperately, “I didn’t notice a cough.  Anne must have fresh air.  O please, please, we must go to the stream, or I’ll just die.” 

“You make it sound like your health far worse than Anne’s.  I think we better hold off,” reaffirmed Helen.  

Leah usually exploded with zealous fervor, talking unceasingly to try to get anyone, and everyone’s attention. Not a milligram of exhaustive signs showed in the process, until her frame collapsed inside the loft’s coverings at the eve’s close. Helen once complained to her father about it, to which he warned that Leah had been born a blessing to better raise them all to heightened ebullience.  When one showed even a sliver of annoyance to her gabble, Leah’s sensitive nature ignited into a temper, which broiled into words of a stubborn defense.  Her two characteristic factions wore everyone’s patience, but without a doubt, it also piquantly massaged her audiences' spirits idyllically distracted into the positives.   

Helen said nothing else, while Leah prattled onward, until after Abraham Beacher barreled in heaving fusilladed buckets, the subtle odor of the fresh milk to present.  He met a verbal greeting to Leah with her throwing her arms in full force about his waste. Anne staggered into the room with a rough hackle, surprised by Leah’s obvious piercing glare locked and following her every step she took to the table.  “And a very good morning to my sweet Anne,” Abraham leaned over and gave Anne a kiss, “I milked the cows, so don’t you mind repeating that yourself.”  

“Thank you, Father,” Anne bestowed a grin, and then a cough. 

“I don’t see anything wrong with Anne,” Leah abruptly pleaded with Helen. 

Helen only shrugged a response to Leah, and Abraham recognized by their exchange that he’d missed something. He proceeded gathering each for invoking thanksgiving on the finished meal, ate, and then promptly left for his duties.  No added additional butter or other frills satiated. with the repast’s installment, for Helen scooped the last, insufficient amount of butter from a dish to cut into flour for biscuits; only to now wait for the newest cream to separate to pursue that luxury again. 

After a grueling deliberation between the three picking up the disrupted dishes and that from the meal, beyond her cough, Anne looked undone enough to receive the lesser charge of making hardtack.  In the yard, Leah hung around in conversation with Herald, the goat, bleating and Maude, the cow, in the stockyard, while Helen scooped animal dung and used straw into a single pile of manure, leftover from three months of accumulating. The clouds above refused to dissipate, so that the duration of their action fraught cooler, and overcast.   

Their father appeared quietly and suddenly, “out of the way Leah…to the house Miss Beacher…with Leah for bread and cheese. I’ll meet everyone momentarily,” he prodded Leah waggishly, and when she didn’t move, he picked her up and put her beside Helen to the side, as he scooted a filled wheelbarrow far out to the proper destination. Rescued from outdoor chores, Helen took Leah’s hand, and she and Anne eagerly set up the table to share alongside their father for dinner.  

At dinner, Mr. Beacher insisted that Anne merely intermingle between churning the butter with relieving interludes. “Will do the stockyard next,” Helen answered her submissive compliance. 

“Will throw the cow back in the barn and look for treasure is what we're going to do,” Leah inserted.   

“Maude will do alright in the stockyard, now Leah,” heralded Abraham. “Please help Helen, Leah, she needs you.” 

Helen felt infinitely far from completing the responsibility, at four times the pace of Leah, who accompanied her with plenty of skipping and singing.  Helen considered while watching Leah with resolute buoyant gaiety, the likely capacity of the chores' entire completion done with half the burden if Anne in better health.   

“Done Helen,” Leah punched the air triumphant. 

“Let’s stack and fix the pile of fresher fodder just inside the doors. Not today, no runs, rivers, or streams today, Leah. I warned you at breakfast…And we really neglected lots, to take over much of tomorrow as well.” Helen’s answer gnawed and bothered her enough to not allow Leah the chance to pursue her fancies. If her father allowed so, she would wish to send the unproductive Leah on alone. 

“Not if we do it like this,” copying Helen’s steady continuance tossing and reshuffling hay strewn across the floor, Leah grabbed a large pitchfork, tipsy by the weight, and steading herself she went at super speed, hurrying to deliver minor amounts of hay into the designated mound huffing and breathing loudly for emphasis.  Then within minutes, she collapsed on the growing mountain of straw. 

“I’m tired Helen, I think I’ll just rest my head on our pile for a minute.” Leah flopped her face back into the hay, and Helen whimsically dumped the next measure from her pitchfork to cover Leah’s head, causing Leah to send up contained, muffled giggles.  

“Good afternoon,” an older gentleman, tall and handsome, strolled into the barn.  “You must be Abraham Beacher’s daughters, Mr. Nathanael Freeman,” the man doffed his hat to the two girls.  Leah emerged straight away with hay strands sticking out in all directions of her hair, and both girls stared at the man dumbfounded.   When the girls said nothing, the man carried on, “I met your father when he first arrived.” 

As his speech trailed, Mr. Beacher entered the barn from the background. “Nice to see you again,” Abraham reached out to shake his hand.  “Girls, this is Mr. Nathanael, a first cousin of my father.  He knew your Uncle Thaddeus,” he reiterated. “Nathanael my girls. Helen, my oldest, and the little one that looks like a scarecrow is Leah,” Abraham pointed to each one in turn.  “Anne, my middle child, feels unwell, and so in the house resting.” 

“She is not severely ill? Your one missing, I mean,” Mr. Freeman inquired. 

“Oh no, just all the fixings of a troublesome passing cold, I’m sure she’ll be rid of it by next sunrise,” replied Beacher. 

“Well, then I wanted to invite you out Sunday after church services to Bradmore.  I do think your girls should like better acquainting with my two sons not much older or the same age as Miss Beacher here,” Freeman, by his outward showing of dress appearance, looked like he’d acquired some measure of economic security.  The two Beacher’s, Helen and Leah, suddenly in his company kept a bashfully, intimidated, unresponsive distance. “If you are available, of course?” 

Thaddeus mentioned meeting relations in his letters.  Freeman assisted Thaddeus to find land, and according to Mr. Freeman, he frequently attended his dining hall.  The limited information from Thaddeus, described Freeman as a man well thought of in the community and charming; but then added a comment about his insatiable appetite for growing his estate as large as the most influential landowners in the colony.  

“Thank you for the invitation, we look forward to knowing you and yours better,” Abraham replied. “It’s reassuring to have some relatives in the neighborhood.” 

“Excellent, I have another business to attend to today. So, excuse me I must be on my way,” as he did at the first, Mr. Freeman tipped his hat again. 

“Yes, of course,” Abraham responded.  “Let me walk you to your horse.” 

“He has two older boys; you know what that means,” Leah said, as soon as they were alone. 

“I’m stumped, what does it mean?” Helen asked.  

“You’ll fall madly in love with one, and Anne the other,” she climaxed by burying her face into the straw in giddy hysterics. 

“You're going to get what’s coming,” Helen threw more hay at her.  “Surely you don’t know what you are talking about.” 

“I bet they live in a big house, with lots of nice things.” 

“That means nothing to me,” Helen pressed her tool onward, and in this phase, Leah jumped in, more supportive of completing the task. 

“You both runoff before the day done.” Abraham restored his support to the barn, the once ambitious mill-owner now cut down from practice, striving no more for the want to excel above any man, but rather living within a humble strength of basic industry and its surroundings. “I’ll finish up here”. This world harbored massive opportunity, but only possibilities, not carpets of golden threads of excess. The blank notebook, liberated economy, slapped those heeding its beckoning, with next to nothing, and for the thorough, determined, patient, and faithful the potential at scribbling a vast panoply of endings.   

“Thank you, thank you,” the girls needn’t hear more; they both used restraint to drop their pitchforks, and bound to the river.      

 

 

2 

“Can you please move your big elbow. It takes up the whole bench,” Anne muttered fumes into Helen’s ear, swinging her arm up and out to plant the ideal shove; that pushed Helen’s arm away in the fury. Helen replicated Anne’s gesture, without words, but exuded brimming ire. It escalated to a minor, yet disturbing eruption by comparison to the silence of the still, better directed patrons that surrounded them; and it continued until Mr. Beacher gave a stern gaze, a warning that they did not want to know what may happen if they didn’t quit.   

Rays of sun illuminated a lively brightness, adorned the vast quantity of seating in the chapel, all of which filled themselves with different sorts of sabbath worshippers. The Beacher children had limits to staring forward with extended interest, while watching from the chapel balcony’s hard benches; but instead exercised their minds with all sorts of ways to just survive the boredom.  

“You are without the natural feelings of humanity, if you are not in a continual agony to do as much good for your children as much good as you possibly can. As one ancient writer put it, ‘nature teaches us to love our children as ourselves’. Watching the eagles provide sustenance for the growing eaglets, a marvel to behold…,” the preacher rambled on and on. 

Helen and Anne kept regularly to at least maintain a partial nondisruptive habit. Severed in separation, with Mr. Beacher between, usually Leah often passed the duration with no self-constraint. Except this service Leah contentedly found herself mesmerized by following different lines of light until they distanced too far, or broke by a fixture or object, then catching the stream of another. A brief excitement developed when Rachel Steward waved towards the youngest sister from a seat below, and Leah responded in delight, with a similar reply. Leah only came to church two Sundays out of the month.  The other sabbaths either Helen or Anne kept with her at the cottage, and then they fought and coveted for the other that went to receive valuable personal attention with their father. 

Influenced first by Rachel, her older sister, Janet, enjoined her own viewing of recognition toward the balcony, while trying to contain her youthful sister.  These Stewards frequented the Beacher’s property. Thaddeus Beacher consented to the widowed neighbor, Alice Steward, and her three children, to take fruit in the orchard, and any vegetables in the gardens.  They discovered from Mrs. Steward that Thaddeus often left on diplomatic expeditions to the land’s greater interior; and that her knowledge of Thaddeus primarily came from her late husband’s close neighborly alliance with him. Entering the Beacher’s grounds, at leisure, even with this disturbing, strange absence of Thaddeus, came naturally. In the onset of meeting with Steward’s, Abraham endorsed his brother’s initial agreement with their mother.  The Beacher girls matched with Mrs. Steward’s Janet, a little older than Helen and Rachel a year older than Leah. And these pairings brought friendship for the Beacher’s that diminished any apprehensions of the newness of culture and setting, that so dramatically varied from the English countryside.   

Loads of relief happened suddenly when the preacher concluded and removed his Bible and paper from the platform. A local authority anteriorly presented efforts to keep the people connected by a brief message about town meetings and events, and then the girls thrust their arms into knots for a closing prayer. 

“Just wait on the bench, while I find Mr. Freeman to see about directions from the church to his residence,” Abraham asked, “Helen’s in charge.” In the ensuing abandonment, they peered out, catching Janet Steward signing all sorts of gestures to them, and making exaggerated statements with her lips. 

“I don’t get it, what she wants to tell us,” Helen related to Anne of giving Janet nonplussed attention. Anne shrugged her shoulders, and Leah copied, with all eyes, Helen squinting for better usage, secure on Janet.  Any more attempts to decipher broke by Mrs. Steward ceasing to let others by and leading her children in the progression of filing out. 

“I had better go to Janet. I’ll be back?” suggested Helen. 

“No, you can’t,” said Anne. “You’re in charge for heaven’s sake, and Father will come again before you do.” 

 Anne’s caution finalized with their father’s voice sounding from the stairwell, leading to the balcony recommending reunification.  Leah had begun meandering along wooden seats, with her hand following the back part of the emptied benches and instantly scurried to hasten toward their father. 

They went in an opposite direction than the normal dusty road home. “How long will it take to get there?” Helen contemplatively observed during the passing of countryside.  

“Mr. Freeman thought we should put in a good three hours,” said Abraham “Before far gone and forgotten. What did you two beautiful girls learn today?” 

“He admitted straight up a desire to speak to the fathers,” started Anne brusquely, pointing out the pastor’s preface, that immediately put Anne in graver difficulty to await the messages closure.  “I didn’t pay much attention after that. I am not a father, and I don’t expect to be one.” 

“He wanted gentler fathers toward their children,” Helen paid no attention, so she hoped the answer broad enough to establish authenticity. 

“You certainly do not look like fathers,” Beacher with an ethereal, airy contributing reply.  “But you’re going to choose the father of your children; accustom yourselves to qualities desirable for a good father.  That choice important because it affects so many outcomes…I could never let any of you out to a scoundrel.”     

“I want to marry someone tall, handsome, with dark hair…I’m sick of my light hair…oh, and kind,” began Helen.  “I want many children to help dig up rows of potatoes. Don’t you think I would make good rummaging up all sorts of turnips and carrots?  And my children will have his dark hair.” 

“You’re fond of potatoes?” replied Abraham. 

“We haven't gotten enough since we left England.” Leah skipped along, holding Beacher’s hands in adding to Helen’s part of the discussion. “When I grow older, we will never be short of potatoes.” 

“Use caution with many a man, there are some that think being tough means taking advantage. They’ll marry, and insist on none of your good opinions,” Abraham committed.  “Make sure these boys you decide on for company respect your intelligence.”  

“I want to marry a pirate,” Leah insisted. 

“A pirate kills people, and steals,” retorted Helen. “They drink, and father said no scoundrels.”  

“No, my pirate treats the animals…and people kindly...and he is very handsome,” she slurred, punctuating with emphasis on “animals” and “handsome”. “And, since you’ll marry a man with hair the color of a crow…I’ll just take a simple blonde like mine, with a wooden leg because he fought off a shark…and an old, felt sea hat. 

Mr. Beacher moved on, “And what about you Anne, you’ve been quiet?” 

Anne hesitated for a minute. “I don’t know…I really want to marry someone like you, Father,” she said carefully.  

“Well then now you have become little miss perfect,” Leah exclaimed, but slightly stiller yet with Anne’s calming thought. Leah immediately begged her father to carry her.  Abraham lifted her onto his shoulders, positively motivated by his daughter Anne’s thoughtful response.   

“Whoa, what a big house,” Anne gawked at the destination when it appeared in the distance. They admired many large homes along the path, but their father pointed out this one, and so ladened with a wealth of expectancy along the way, it satisfied them with an impressive appearance.  

“They do have their own tastes here, across the ocean,” Abraham already once before Mr. Freeman at the address, and left without noting its size, but one might see things in a different light once hearing childlike input. On this refreshed venture, he better wondered and recognized Mr. Freeman’s notable accumulation of prosperity.  

Five windows swept across the second story, with one striking gable thrust out above that. A small, built area jetting off to one side of the ground floor and opening to a brick building, where cookers smoke bellowed from a chimney. “Shall we think to see what these distant relatives of ours have done to it inside?” Abraham fueled the girl’s imaginations about the forthcoming possibilities. 

An impressive half oval pediment with columns hovered over for framing dark brown, walnut entry doors that Anne knocked on.  A male servant answered the door and signaled to another to search for Mr. Freeman. The home's mistress, Mrs. Freeman first greeted Abraham, whom Anne sensed from her, forcing attempts to be pleased. “And what is the name of your youngest?”  

“Uh, Leah” 

“Very good, will Miss Leah,” Mrs. Freeman tapped her hand on Leah’s head. “Meet Rebekah...a pleasant bauermaid, nothing to fear. So, for now Rebekah escort Leah to that delightful abode, where she can meet our James and Jacob.” 

Leah shyly ducked, scowling and brooding while being ushered away from Mr. Beacher, Helen, and Anne. Mrs. Freeman reassured Abraham with further details of Leah receiving plenty of food and care while they dined away with those not mature enough for such distinguished graces. The girls and Beacher noticed a curious accent from the hostess, and Abraham knew enough of the world, that he decided it likely rooted near Scotland.  

Through the corridors, Leah calmed her nerves and rapidly warmed to Rebekah, the African servant who immediately communicated with an amicable sociable spark. 

Mr. Freeman joined them and adroitly with two older boys guided the entourage to the neighboring living area, commencing to address Abraham concerning Thaddeus’ involvement with local governing councils and businesses.   “Thank you, David,” the astute Mr. Freeman picked up a glass of wine from an offered tray. “Let’s pour a glass of cider for the two Beacher girl’s table settings, so they have something right away when we are seated,” he told the young footman waiting on them, “which I believe should come shortly.” 

Nathanael Freeman Jr. tall and broad shouldered, with coal black wavy hair, Helen watched awkwardly at his dark eyes staring straight at her, reading her every feature and subtle movement. Unlike Nathanael, the younger boy Amos looked to the floor, with hair hanging gangly and tattered by his face with a portion partitioned just barely back. Shaken and cued by his father, he posed a curt, stiff, sullen bow by comparison to Nathanial’s amity.  

More on the subject if his brother, Mr. Freeman, enlightened Abraham concerning Thaddeus’ passions and energy in seeking to prepare reports about the terrain and establishing relations with native tribes and churlish and crude mountain communities.  “He dined at our home once, or sometimes even twice here annually, depending on how much we found him in the area.” 

“I do believe you, Mr. Freeman. Many chance encounters around…and from a wide range of people, I hear good things about him when the topic arises,” said Abraham uneasy by Mr. Freeman’s charm. “It’s taken in retrospect, but even when we first explored Williamsburg, and sought information and assistance, it thus bemused and impressed me how much the politically shrewd knew him.” 

“You understand now that it pleases others to have another Beacher.  With the name recognition, you already have notoriety.  Thaddeus knows respect among a variety of circles and the well-loved in Surry,” Mr. Freeman’s added as the servant hunched himself beside Mr. Freeman to mumble a readiness regarding the scheduled five course meal. “If possible, everyone would warmly publicize glad tidings to see your brother Thaddeaus home,” he motioned to the crowd by standing aright, and straightening his waistcoat. “Dear Miss Anne, you may join us in the dining hall, or your younger sister. Whichever pleases you?”  

“Oh..uh..,the dining hall,” she responded with her eyes on Abraham, in case he might weigh in differently. 

“Alright, well come along,” Mr. Freeman led. 

 Abraham quickly bent down and took Anne’s hands gently in his, and to her and Helen both he rehearsed several ways for them to brighten the room with their excellent manners.  

Continuing under the spell of their location, both Helen and Anne took extra care to live by those mutterings of their father’s expectations concerning conduct within the duration of the meal at the table. Plastered with pale green, with a deeper shade of curtains, the dining hall also housed a white molding circled in frills and fancy between the ceiling and the upper crust of the wall, before the space launched to a vaulted ceiling. Open and spacious, three windows brought in light descending from its view to the front yard.  

“Nathanael, Amos, how perfect the weather. Why don’t you relieve these girls from the dining hall, and take them on a tour of the grounds,” Mr. Freeman invited, with a strawberry custard dessert placed in front of each person for a last course. A few bites later, the boys simultaneously pushed their chairs along the room's woven rug, rising to heed the proposition laid out by their father. “There guests, remember to be gentlemen.”  

From the opposite side of the table, to the central wing of the house, the four went out a back door, partitioned in seclusion as a quaint mudroom; they carried themselves to an outside patio, and off into some distant grassy space. A large barn arose in a distance from a place on the property, blocking the area from a space of leveled forest. For consideration for both Beacher sisters, Nathanael moved onward at such a rushed pace, as if hasting to get away, leaving the girls to partially jog to keep up. Amos remained closer to them, doing better at reinforcing their efforts to keep beside the oldest brother. However, the entire venture collapsed in security, when Amos made more troubling the condition by commenting to Nathanael about his considering their company a chore. 

  “Once we catch up, they’ll probably shed agreeableness,” Anne said in soft confidence towards Helen when they halted beside a barn.  

“Get us some croquet mallets and ball Dumah, you old bloc,” Nathanael blasted testy demands towards an African man a few meters out.     

“I’ve never played croquet, I hope it’s not hard,” Anne attempted to calm the atmosphere. 

“Anything with a bunch of baby girls is not my idea of fun,” Nathanael randomly and mordantly pronounced.  

“You’re probably not able to even hit the ball,” added Amos. “Just manage as best you can.” 

Increasingly intimidated, the girls stood by, not daring to take a step from this side or that of a silent protecting phalanx.  The young man sent away for the requested items returned, and the Beacher’s remained by each other, following again behind the boys on the way to an open field. The girls watched on, frozen in stone, while Amos rushed to set out wickets. Nathanael explained the rules in three semi-distinguishable sentences, and then instantly hit his ball first. “You’re up Amos,” he slapped his brother on the shoulder. One may not pick it out in a hap hazardous crowd of others, without knowing about their kinship, and from the dark hair and facial features, these Freeman’s looked like brothers. However, Amos’s thinner, lank appearance stood out as the boy’s obvious stark contrast.  

Amos’ ball breathlessly rolled through one wicket and earned himself another bonus swing. “It’s because you’re a lucky brute,” called out Nathanael.  

“Helen wake up, and go,” Amos mumbled simultaneously at Nathanael’s slur and spit to the ground.   

Helen glanced at Anne looking puzzled, and insecure about inquiring for more details on what to do. She approached a ball she understood designated for her and copied what they witnessed Nathanael and Amos doing. Maybe either of them might give information if she missed a step, or any other obvious, desperate need surfaced. Helen swung gently, barely hitting the ball, and sending it out a few meager inches.  Amos chuckled, while she swung again, and overexerted hitting the ball so that it rolled across the field, and out amongst a collection of trees.  “Oh, look Anne, a rabbit,” the practicality in Helen pointed an admiring finger at the animal sighted, hopping away from Helen’s advancing ball.  Amos laughed much harder.  

Nathanael let out sounds of aggravation, “You cheated Helen…Two hits make you a charlatan and a thief…but that means nothing since your ball’s in the woods.”  

“You know you are very mean boys, I’ve never even heard of this game,” Helen rallied with courage to spew a defense. “I want to go home.” 

“Right, next time no mallets, let’s scurry and loiter about the forest in search of elf elixirs and rabbits,” came Nathanael’s acidic answer. 

“We are guests at your house.  I would think being three years older, you might have some kinder words.  And I mean both of you.” Helen proposed again, and Amos’ sides might have ached from amusement. 

Nathanael marched way into the distance from where to fetch Helen’s ball, and with intimidation to show some sort of merciful virtue, slammed it to the ground in front of her.  “Take another turn,” his voice resounded, steamily irritated mixed with sarcastic antics. For this oldest son Nathanael, his vest hung open, and he wrapped his sleeves to his elbows when away from his parents, showing a desire for the informal over Amos’ continuing to ignore that easing of his apparel, or forgo such an approach on style. 

Anne stilled the negative bantering by hitting the ball through one wicket and watched it stop rolling at the second as the game progressed.  “Yeah,” she smiled, “I think I did good.” 

With eight wickets to pass the ball through, Nathanael’s edgy responses tapered. He took the lead at first, after he championed control over his opponents by hitting Helen’s ball into the bushes. Amos next requited Nathanael’s far off course.  Along with Nathanael thwarting Helen’s chances, she continued to fall ridiculously behind, and so her desires for redemption turned towards Anne’s gaining on Amos.  “Come on Anne, give these boys your best,” she cheered.  

Helen found a goodly forbearance of camaraderie blasting through the Freeman’s dismal cloud covering, accentuated by Amos’s continuous presentation of scoffing overtones. “Hit Amos’ ball to France,” she turned to Anne having completely resigned from any chance of more than last place and whispered, cowering to see Nathanael watching and overhearing.    

“I practice a lot,” Amos bragged after his ball passed through the sixth of eight wickets. On her next turn, and completing a round, Anne followed up with her ball passing through the sixth wicket, pulling up to Amos’s.  
“Looks like Amos, you've almost been beaten by a seven-year-old girl,” Nathanael taunted, as he next hit his ball. 

Amos’s ball, a few finger lengths in front of Anne’s, hit his onward and away from the risk of Anne’s ability to knock it away in an upcoming move. Helen hastily hit her ball, not caring much. When Anne successfully knocked Amos’ ball way out anyway, Helen let out a yelp of delight and jumped in to hug her sister. They celebrated, as if Anne had just defeated a ruthless tyrannical adversary.   

“You cheated!” The Beacher’s jolted in their regaling in victory, bewildered by Amos’ sudden accusation, and demand for attention by his tone, transformed and framed with a flame that replaced the previous merriment. “I saw you move your ball after your second hit.  I said nothing when it happened, not wanting to spoil little Anne’s first game.” 

“I did not, you liar. You’re just a sore loser,” came Anne’s impetuous shout. 

“You’re calling me a liar,” he pointed to himself, then pushed Anne down to the grass. “You little cheat.” 

Helen jumped to assist Anne to her feet, “Didn’t your mother ever teach you anything about shoving people. Come on Anne, we’re not playing this duller than nails match anymore,” they began to carry on from the area. “Let’s go find Leah.”  

“Helen’s right. You just made yourself upset from losing to a girl,” Nathanael picked on the brother. “Especially, one who’s never seen a croquet mallet in her life.”  

“Shut your trap,” Amos pushed Nathanael to the side. Helen and Anne left the brothers feuding, rushing down a hillside and through some trees, “Come back…come back and finish it,” Amos shouted at Helen and Anne. “…Fine, good…  you’re the losers.” Nathanael and Amos watched, struck and stranded with a mess of equipment thinking of what to do next.  

Together the Freeman brothers moseyed their way to the front of the house, where they found their father lounging on a porch with a large pipe clinched in his teeth, chatting with Mr. Beacher.  Not far from that Leah and the two younger Freemans hustled about with nets in hand.  “Catch bugs with us Amos, it’s great,” James Freeman pleaded.   

“Not now,” Nathanael said harshly, when the two older boys rushed past the four-year-old James, and an even younger Jacob.  

“Well, what happened to Mr. Beacher’s girls?” Freeman asked with a frown on his face.  Abraham Beacher, more casually shared in the wonder of what happened to his daughters. 

“Amos yelled at one of them, and it scared them off,” Nathanael said, pointing over his shoulder to Amos’s delay in approaching Nathanael from farther behind.  

“And…,” Mr. Freeman looked sharply at Amos. 

Amos stammered and avoided eye-contact in anxiousness. “They ran off, Sir.”  

“Then go, and don’t want to see you here beside me without them,” growled Freeman.  Just as he sent the boys off, Freeman turned to Abraham, “I apologize. That second one has a biting temper, I don’t always know what to do about it. The boys can navigate the property well, and Nathanael’s a good child. They’ll bring them around soon.” 

The girls maneuvered in and out, and around dozens of lofty tree trunks and shrubs. The foliage of bark and leaves persisted in an all over dense forest as they scurried in this farther wandering. “The best part of getting out those balls and mallets happened when we ran away,” Anne continued congratulating themselves.  

“I’m just glad you won. You put them perfectly in their proper place,” Helen continued the revelry of reliving the croquet match. “Nathanael’s sort of a nasty, sweet.” 

“Amos wasn’t so bad until the end” 

“But oh, but Amos crying about your cheating, really turned this into strange,” Helen chuckled under her breath at the ordeal.  “There are a couple of ugly elixir elves, if you ask me. Probably spoiled in that big old house.”  

The earth’s surface slopped mildly and then brought the girls to a fierce and swift descent into a creek. There they discovered a particular rope hanging from the branch of a large sturdy walnut tree, and several boards nailed into the trunk for a ladder.  “Nathanael and Amos must have made this,” Anne said excitedly as she rushed to climb.  Helen passed the apparatus, with less interest, and carefully moved her way down another steep incline, with attraction to the stream. Removing her shoes and stockings, she headed with her barren feet to the shallow water.   

After thoroughly indulging herself in exploring the unique add-ends to the tree, Anne joined her sister. “Eek, it’s cold,” she bellowed. Where Helen already muddled through the thick, deeper rippling almost touching the bank on the farther side.  

“Come and see Anne, a whole lot of tadpoles,” said Helen, studying the possibilities beneath the water. Anne slowly maneuvered her feet through the many rocks at the stream bottom, until she pulled up beside her sister to watch the growing frogs, and even scoop a cupful in her hands. When they both agreed to enough satisfaction wading in the water, the bank became a spot to sit and chat. 

“Do you remember when mother brought us on a picnic in the fields behind the house?” Anne asked. 

“Yeah, and we sang silly songs,” replied Helen merrily, “and wanted badly to teach Leah to walk.” But speaking rare words in reference to a beautiful mother, who spent those past afternoons beside them, created an unintended, automatic tender minute of quiet. They tried hard not to dwell on the image of her, tall, long blonde hair, --often tied up, and a bonnet atop, spirited eyes, lest its emptiness brought a dash of sorrow to the soul. 

“Do you remember when you tripped and rolled down the hillside?” Anne said jovially, while Helen recanted the event.  “You tore your stockings and screamed for mother. I thought you must have been really hurt badly.” Out of the corner of her eye, Helen caught sight of Nathanael and Amos, and with instinct, she leapt to run. They ambushed the girls with haste, dragging and thrusting them in the shallow current, before Helen’s body and mind got a chance to fully react properly, and better save them from the cold, damp finish. 

Clapping and cheering with war paint streaked across their face; Nathanael and Amos commended their success of the brilliant, mediated attack. Anne’s bottom clothing tore, having been caught on an outstretched limb. “You know now the fate of cheaters,” added Amos, throwing a rock just missing Anne.   

Helen gathered herself enough to hurl armfuls of water up for a retributive soaking to Nathanael.  “Ha…ha…ha,” she drove in each word, and unwilling to have her good mood spoiled, smiled in the process. And as Helen ceased her counter taking care of Nathanael, Anne charged straight into Amos, knocking him hunched over with her forearm and using extraordinary force at his knees.  Amos held out a hand to catch himself in the fall, but it wasn’t enough to stop his head from crashing into several large rocks sticking out from the stream bed.  

They watched, mesmerized by Amos’s groaning in the brook. “Who do you think you are?”  A sopping wet Nathanael turned on Anne, now standing next to him along the shore. 

“Serves your brother with justice after perfectly picking on her. Your all just big bul----“ 

Anne stopped Helen short with a gasp.  “You alright?” She tore a frayed piece of her gown and ran into the water, handing it over to Amos to stop obvious bleeding across his head. 

“My arm really hurts,” he whimpered, taking Anne’s offering with subdued hostility. 

“We had better take you home,” suggested Helen.  

“Don’t touch him,” Nathanael demanded, “Alright, get up brother, let’s go.”  Amos pushed himself up with his good arm and followed Nathanael up and out through the trees.  Like at the first, the girls again tagged from behind, but with uneasy guilt over that nervousness they harbored after dinner. 

 

 

 

3 

 

Mrs. Alice Steward supported her children by the means of knitting stockings and winter caps from wool and mending clothing for others in the community. As coefficient to their existence, Helen, Leah, and Anne received instructions, counsel, and learning under the domestic tutelage of Mrs. Steward, a neighborly niche she took to raise them some from whence they had become without.  “We waited for the doctor to arrive,” Helen paced the room, reiterating the Sunday encounter. “Mr. Freeman offered Anne, father, and I a pack of cards after standing by awhile. Nathanael sat in the corner sulking.” 

Already the girls with Mrs. Steward’s two daughters, carded and spun wool, and knitted projects.  Mrs. Steward provided them with an eagerness to join her, by consistently expressing positive words of welcoming, and what felt like earnest gratitude for their lending a hand. While they rehearsed the trouble they brought to Amos Freeman, Mrs. Steward, the widow, coached Anne, near her hearth, stitching together the gown she tore during the episode at the Freeman’s. “Did Nathanael say anything while watching you from the corner?” Janet listened at the worktable stagnate and riveted with Helen’s recanting their strange incidents at the Freeman’s. Simultaneously, Helen directed Leah and Rachel in kneading dough. 

“Nothing. . .everything he blathers about completely rude, so I suppose he didn’t dare talk in front of his father, or ours,” Helen explained. “Right after the doctor arrived, Mrs. Freeman asked a servant to convey us home in an open carriage.   I’m sure he broke his arm, and I only hope that his head injury not so bad.  Mrs. Freeman did confirm to us before we left him about his being still conscious,” she concluded, an essence of the childish dramatic. Anne quietly swerved the needle in and out of the fractured skirt; head and shoulders marginally slumped and inwardly pleading to not allow questioning for any of her additional thoughts on the episode. Reflections on the confrontation at Freeman’s kept her embarrassed, and guilty for the havoc she caused, which greatly contrasted with Leah’s exulted, exclamated cheers, as if Anne the major victor of the light-hearted, turned bludgeon, scrutinizing confrontation. 

“Rachel, will you fetch buckets of water,” said Mrs. Steward. “Take Leah along if you like.” 

“Don’t step on the wood cracks, and then when we go without don’t step on the grass, or the beavers will jump out and grab you,” Leah explained to Rachel as she went also in the direction to egress, laughing as they carefully positioned their feet, like a wild, rhythmic hop across the floorboards.  

“How do we not step on the grass?” Rachel flinched. 

“Big leaps...maybe…I don’t know will figure that out” 

“With the grass all around the well?” 

 “We might get lost or captured, you know,” added Leah whimsically deflecting Rachel’s logic. 

“You better not...we need water,” demanded Helen at that last second, before Leah disappeared in an obvious ignoring. 

“There you go, now you’ve got it.  A firm stitch that will hold,” Mrs. Steward said, investigating Anne’s progress at the onset of her mending, and handing the skirt again to Anne’s hands, followed by turning to pick up one of her own clothing projects.  “There’s fresh milk in the wooden bucket just over there. Janet, can you start pouring it into pans by the fire to heat through for cheese, while Helen forms the hardtack ready for baking.  I think six or seven loaves, so portion it out just right Helen.  Also cream from the cows retrieved at dawn still sits probably half done in the butter churn.  I really should have had Rachel do that before I let her go.” 

Helen proceeded, consciously rolling out a dough base for making circles with the cutter, standing by Janet, entranced by her friends preparing cheese molds, until volunteering to churning butter.  “What did you tell us at the chapel on Sunday? We couldn’t make you out?” Helen asked. 

“Oh, yes…I wanted you to stop by.  Lulu gave birth to puppies on Thursday,” said Janet. “I thought you should see.” 

“Done,” Anne skipped out from her chair wearing her white undergarments, holding up the completed product.  A barely noticeable brighter shade of brownish black, replaced a hole around the gown’s bottom. 

Mrs. Steward retrieved the gown to again closely examine the stitching, and complimented Anne on her advancement and attempts at components of sustainability.  “If the seam doesn’t hold, don’t hesitate to allow me to watch and better school you for any fixing. But it’s not bad Anne, really it might work.”     

When the Beacher’s related their saga concerning Anne tearing her gown, Alice discovered that besides the one that Helen and Anne each wore, not much more existed beyond that.  Anne packed two in England, and then already had a prequel of a tare among those she brought comparable to her skirt caught and torn out beside Bradmore’s stream.  Helen once rose to the occasion of stitching that other one, but then being only nine, and not yet better taught, the seam she made did not endure long from her first attempt at the distressed part of the garment. The remaining shared gown began to fit Anne better. Mrs. Steward petitioned that they frequent her fireside, especially amidst the seasonal of cooled months, so that she might instruct the girls in tailoring needed new clothing for Helen, “that will free your father to spend his earnings on a new home and better equipment.” 

 “That’s actually a good idea,” Helen concurred from over her shoulder, her eyes watching the milk curdling beneath Janet’s stirring stick. “We will better learn the right care and preparation of clothing for ourselves. That way we can always have something when we grow.”   

Leah, with her own four gowns, fared without worry in her selection of daily choices.  She inherited her sister’s old things, and from that she adorned some of the finer things Abraham purchased in England, when his business thrived.  Among the belongings brought, girls loved to look through their mother’s ware.  Mr. Beacher packed several to pass on to the girls for sentiment when they became young women. 

“With bravery you offered the young Master Freeman a hand, after he’d treated you so cruelly,” Mrs. Steward randomly directed the thought to Anne slipping in to her refurbished clothing, who responded with a mere meager polite, gracious nod, and after Anne tucked her white neck band in, and promptly started lending her hands to the food preparation, not ready to wait around for anyone to find a reason for them to return to solitude waiting for their father in their shanty household. 

“Anne, Helen, you must hold these puppies,” Leah brought herself with a bounding.  She and Rachel managed to grossly extend a thirty-minute task into a very lengthy berth of time.  “Mibsam said I might be able to have one…ew…oh, I hope Father says yes.” 

Mibsam Steward, Mrs. Steward's hearty ruddy oldest son, strolled behind them carrying several buckets of water; and without restraint Helen watched in bewildering agitation and disappointment, at the sight of him doing the chore, as if Leah accomplished very little while away. It put her in a sudden, irksome urge to arise and thank the Steward’s, and then request that the girls go home with an excuse that hour existed with an emerging congruency to a sunset.  Her excitement to audit the litter of puppies greatly diminished, teetering on non-existent.  

“But first you must see the puppies Helen, you must...must,” Leah pleaded. 

“We wanted to, but then you just spent three hours retrieving the water.  You saw them already,” Helen answered crossly. “So, let’s just go.” 

“Patience Helen, we can see them quickly on our way out,” Anne took Leah’s side. “And really, it’s not been a complete three hours, I think you’re exaggerating.” 

“I can see you all home, if you’re worried about dusk,” Mibsam offered.  “I need to speak to your father, anyway.  I thought of asking Mr. Beacher for his support shearing the sheep,” he half addressed his mother to at least become privy to better discover her confirmation. 

Janet grabbed Anne’s arm and ceased the debate by escorting her out towards the dwelling of their dog beside the barn. “Just wait, Helen. I’ll meet you soon to see you to your dwelling,” Mibsam said to her within her brooding hesitation, and reached with his hand for a chair to drag over and sit closer to speak one-on-one with his mother. 

Similar to Mrs. Steward’s concerning attention for his daughters, Abraham spent many efforts with Alice Steward’s oldest boy, Mibsam. With the absence of a father, the days for this one boy passed by with a hefty load, unduly put upon him. Over the years, Mrs. Steward worried about his dampening spirits by his lonely unquenchable expectations. So, it gladdened her heart to hear Mibsam’s reports of Mr. Beacher’s attempts at attending him in the onus shared burden of the Steward’s properties.    

 

 

  “Good day Mr. Beacher,” Freeman caught up to him at a community gathering circumventing the church grounds.   

“Master Nathanael how goes the Freeman’s. Especially the young Amos, of whom we brought unfortunate harm,” all three of his daughters watched in the background, with Abraham reaching out for a handshake that Mr. Freeman met. 

“Amos’s a good boy, brought about a full recovery. With that incident now so long ago, I already forgot it myself,” Mr. Freeman explained.  

A Mr. Salathial Parker next stole Abraham for a chat. In an opposite direction of the Steward’s mansion, and on the road farther from main street then the Beacher’s, a few hundred acreage portion of land separated the Beacher property from the Parker’s. Among the generous families that showed up with interest in the Beacher’s efforts to survive on their original sparse resources, Mr. Parker continued his support of Abraham providing friendly guidance on trade and farming in the colony, and a resource for details on people in the surrounding area. 

With a blanket, cheese, and bread packed away, the girls ate until other children, including several of the Parker’s six boys, drew the Beacher’s into a revelry of games. These ventures led them to a finely decorated may pole, and they patiently waited and watched others sing songs and skip, for their turn to hold the brightly colored ribbons. Joram Parker, the second oldest, three years Helen’s senior, mentioned that his mother brought steel wagon wheels with sticks. Two other brothers, Matthew and George, left to return with the supplies.  

Once out in an open field, Joram, the oldest of the group, divided the large group into two teams.   He selected Thomas, the brother just younger than him, to be on the Beacher’s team, while he took another three—Matthew, George¸ and Timothy.  Each team rotated two members for an active frolic, sending their hoops spinning, and cutting through a meadow, using the sticks to keep aright. They went as far as possible before the steel wheel rim fell to the ground.  The person who ran beside the wheel the least far, after the collapse of each steel wheel, they knocked out of the game.  When enough of the entire players on one side finished last, the other team won.   

The first round, Joram paraded with ample gusto into cheering two of the young brothers on. However, Timothy dropped almost as soon as it started, and his accompanying look of disappointment melted rapidly into complete whimpering and crying. “It’s alright Timmy, you can have another go at it.” And on and on the Beacher’s and Parker’s went, among other children, until the game done.