"Pottery!" he said. "From a fine clay bed up Erin River!"
Then he placed his pottery plate on the table with firm hands, and at that imperceptible jar, it promptly fell into five pieces!
But a beginning had been made, and curiously enough it was Moira who became interested in this obscure art of ceramics. The Moseleys continued to eat from wooden slabs for some weeks, while Moira begrimed her fingers with mud that invariably turned to crisp, fragile clay—and then one day she completed a bowl made of substance from which all sand-grains and small pebbles had been painstakingly sieved, and which had been allowed to dry slowly under damp grass. And this time it did not crack. Within a fortnight, a complete set of crockery made its appearance in the culinary department.
At which point Dick began talking vaguely about the construction of a kiln, and Moira started thinking about the possibilities of decorating her proud young chinaware.
So the weeks passed, and it was surprising how much had been accomplished, and how complete and happy life could be, even without the infinitude of small comforts to which they had once been accustomed, and which, on Earth, they had expected and accepted unthinkingly.
There was no teleo to entertain them, but somehow nobody seemed to miss its raucous, glowing presence in the living room; not even Bobby whose greatest interest in life had once been the nightly adventures of The Red Patrolman, transmitted through the courtesy of United Syntho Cereals. Grampaw Moseley made music with a battered banjo he had salvaged from the Cuchulainn; they all sang, and sometimes they danced, too. That was what Moira liked; she'd fix herself all up real pretty and dance and dance, even though her partners were Dick and Pop, who didn't dance the modern swoop-steps very well, and Bobby, who pretended to dislike it very thoroughly, but thought it was kind of fun.
Grampaw carved a cribbage set, too; they played it, and chess, and card games during storms that kept them housebound. Dick, in occasional hours of leisure, cleared a fair athletic field outside. They had a quoits' run, a badminton court (a little uneven, but nobody minded) and a shuffleboard plane; also a fine sand-pit for The Pooch.
Pop had planned the house with his usual mathematical forevision. From its first two rooms, built with an eye to offering swift shelter, soon spread wings. Before long it had four separate bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining-nook, and the living- or meeting-room, which Grampaw called the "git-together" room. There was also a cisterned refreshing-room, and another would be added as soon as Dick devised a method of supplying the house with fresh, running water.
Meanwhile, Mom and Eleanor and Grampaw Moseley were to be thanked for the steady improvement in their menu.