"The old cottage at The Pines. You haven't spoken to him at all?"

Unaccustomed to being interrogated by boys in front of cafes, I shook my head.

"I sold him a book," I said. "What do you want with him?"

"Nothing!" the boy said, bolting off down the street to join his friends, who were hollering and gesturing at him from the open window of a car. He climbed in and they drove off as I cast a last look at the shadow in the cafe window.

Back in the shop, I switched on the lights and settled myself in a wing-chair near the door, feet propped on a battered ottoman. I had planned on reading, but the boy's questions had distracted me. This young man was a new neighbor, then, though not exactly a close one. The low hill and stand of trees known locally as The Pines was closer than some of the farms and not too strenuous a walk if there was no hurry, but far enough out that the little house on the hill had stood empty since last winter. It was difficult to rent as a vacation cottage even in the summer months, when the walk was pleasant and warm.

Still, it wasn't really my concern. Obviously he didn't mind the journey, and at least it would be something to talk about when business was slow.

***

I was woken the next morning by gravel rattling against my bedroom window, which overlooked the street above my porch roof. I waited until another handful had smacked into the glass and then opened it before they could reload.

"What time do you call this?" I shouted down. The figure on the walk glanced up.

"Seven o'clock!" he called back. "Come on, Dusk, out of bed! I've already milked the cows and goats and got the eggs! Brought you some!" He held up a small wire basket.

"Be down in a minute," I said, and shut the window again. I put on enough clothing to be decent and clattered down the stairs, just as he walked into the shop and flicked the lights on.

"Breakfast," he said, setting the basket on the counter.

"No croissants?" I asked. "Classless, Jacob."

"Wondering if you'd do me a favor," he replied, hitching a hip against the counter in a farmer's lean. He made a spare gesture, flicking his fingers at the worktable against the back wall. "You got all those...book tools."

"Binding equipment, yes," I said, ducking under the counter. "Need something bound?"

"Well, I got my dad's Farmer's Guide," he said, laying a dusty, crack-spined book on the table. I whistled and picked it up.

"Rural Bible. This looks like a first printing," I said.

"Couldn't speak to that, but it's got some family things in the front, see," he said, pointing to the inner flyleaf when I opened it. The cheap binding creaked ominously. Inside the frontispiece was a series of names in various hands and shades of ink, a family tree in list form.

"This wasn't just your father's."

"Nah. Grandfather's before him."

"Definitely a first printing. Family treasure?" I asked.

"Sorta. He'll be sixty next week."

"If you don't look after this – "

"Yeah, well, s'kinda why I came in," he said, rubbing the back of his sunburnt head. "Thought you might put a new cover on it, maybe fix some of the loose pages."

I let the book fall open to a random page. Most books will open to the page that's looked at the most. In this case, it was a chapter on diseases common to children.

"How many brothers you got, Jacob?" I asked absently, studying the stitching.

"Three brothers," he said, perplexed. "Two sisters too."

"Mmhm. Well, I can do one of two things."

"Yeah?"

"I could take out the frontispiece," I said, flipping back to the first page. "Coat it in acid-free sealant. There's a new edition of the Farmer's Guide out last year, if you bought a new one I could sew it in..."

"I don't think Dad'd much go for that," Jacob said.

"Probably not. Otherwise..." I closed the book and tapped my fingers against the spine, "...I can take the cover off, take out the damaged sections, paste them and restitch them if they're durable enough, put a new cover on. Paula's got some nice leather for embossing. But that's repair rather than conservation, Jacob. It'll decrease the value of the book."

"Leather cover? You could do that?" he asked.

"Sure. It's not difficult."

"I think that wouldn't make it worth any less," he said. "Not to my dad, anyhow. Leather cover, that'd be something else. You do all that by next week?"

"I don't see why not. Longest wait is for the glue to dry."

"How much you charge for something like that?"

I studied the cover, already thinking about the work. Slice with a scalpel there, and there. Fresh white waxed twine for the new stitching, not too tight or it'd rip the paper. Maybe some reinforcement on the brittle pages.

"Tell you what, run down to Paula's when she opens up, get some of that leather she sells – here, these dimensions," I said, scribbling out rough measurements on a scrap of paper. "You pay for that and bring me some of that cheese you make in spring and we'll call it even."