Emma said nothing about leaving it behind, but because Joe knew her he knew what it cost her to do so. Then, with sudden inspiration, he had pointed out that the chest of drawers could be lashed inside the wagon and would be a convenient storage place for the clothes they would need day by day. Emma had paid him with a grateful smile, but that was not what Joe thought about right now.
He'd been repairing the wagon when he went to the house for a drink of water. Chance had taken him past the kitchen window, and unseen by her, he had observed Emma sitting at the kitchen table. Arranged on it was all her lovely, delicate china. Joe spent an uncomfortable moment watching her adore with her eyes and caress with her hands the most exquisite and beautiful things she had ever owned. Then he had slipped away as quietly as he came, and when he went to the house an hour later the china was all back in the cupboard.
It had stayed there while the days passed, and Joe said nothing because he could think of nothing to say. Emma was fighting day by day, wanting to keep the china and yet knowing that she could not. Finally, and only yesterday, she had asked Joe, all too casually, if he would take it over and give it to Helen Domley.
Doggedly, Joe continued his preparations to shoe the mules. He hadn't given the china to Helen Domley. He had carried it to John Geragty's saw mill, nailed a box together, tenderly packed each piece of china in sawdust, covered the box, and sneaked it into the wagon. Now he worried because it seemed that, somehow, he had both deceived Emma and cheated Helen Domley.
Barbara asked, "Is something the matter, Daddy?"
"Nope," Joe evaded. "Start the bellows will you, honey?"
Barbara hesitated a moment and Joe waited. The past days had wrought a change in his daughter, making her all the more difficult to understand. At times she seemed to have a new maturity, as though she were already a woman, and at others she was a trembling child. But she had never expressed anything except enthusiastic interest in the forthcoming trip. She began to work the bellows steadily, neither too fast nor too slow, and the smell of the hot charcoal in the forge was a good thing.
With a pair of iron tongs, Joe held the mule shoe he was fashioning in the glowing charcoal until the shoe partook of the fire's color. Still gripping it with the tongs, a blacksmith's maul in his right hand, Joe shaped the shoe on the anvil.
Some people didn't care how they shoed their mules; they simply nailed shoes on and let the hoofs grow out to fit them. Joe had never believed in such slipshod methods. He gave painstaking consideration to the temper and weight of the shoe, and the conformation of the hoof it was to fit. Correctly shod draft animals did not go lame easily and they worked harder because they were comfortable. Joe trusted no one else to shoe his mules for him.
He looked critically at the shoe, then reheated it and gave it a slightly wider curve. The mule's hoofs were nearly alike. But they were not exactly alike and each shoe must be designed accordingly. Finally satisfied, Joe plunged the shoe in a pail of tepid water and approached the mule.