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One of the very best things about working at Green Gardens, Demelza has discovered, is how good Simon and Baz are about her own children being present when it becomes necessary. For the most part, she and Ross are able to balance their care, and they still have Abby to help them, but she likes that Ross can come by Green Gardens and drop both children off for the last hour or so of her shift and that no one really minds.

Two additional children, after all, are hardly adding to the number. Jeremy is still small enough that he's content to stay strapped to Demelza as she goes about her final duties and Julia is big enough now, over two years already, that she loves to chase after other children her own age, laughing and shrieking in delight.

They're all out on the grounds now, Demelza assigned to watch a small group of the younger children for a little while longer and while she is particularly happy to do hard, physical work, having grown up in such a world, she has to admit, this is one of her favourite tasks. The children are so sweet and so happy and there's truly nothing better than watching them run to and fro, falling from time to time and looking at her to see if they should cry. She'd learned with her brothers that the best reaction to a fallen child is to simply urge them to have more fun instead of rushing forward to ask if they're alright, therefore inciting the tears to begin, and she avoids most fits this way.

"You're alright, love, just keep running," she encourages when Julia falls down in the grass. At the same time, Jeremy reaches for someone over her shoulder and she turns to find Grantaire approaching across the grounds. Lighting up in a smile, Demelza waves for him to join her, at least for a time.

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Grantaire's had more work at Green Gardens lately, as Darrow schools are out of session and there's more need for the children who do attend public school, especially, to have projects to occupy their time. It's still a bit overwhelming, the idea that he's got any sort of business schooling children in anything, even how to get paint onto a page, but he's always been sort of good at a front, and pretending he knows what he's doing seems to be working amazingly well.

There are children who are angrier, or sadder, less inclined to sit still, in every class, though, and it's them he finds himself determined to reach. He's not sure how, but he knows that impulse.

He's between classes now, though, and doesn't have to think about it. The grounds are beautiful, and he smiles more broadly when he sees Demelza. It seems just about destined that they should speak to each other more, two careers deep into working together, and he makes a beeline toward her.

"Hello there, petite monsieur," he says, waving to Jeremy, and sits himself down next to Demelza. "And hello to you. How're your lot treating you today?" He gestures toward the frolicking children. "You're so patient with them."

"Hello, Grantaire," Demelza answers with another bright smile as Jeremy gurgles against her shoulder and then lets out a string of syllables she knows will be words sooner than she truly realizes. He's coming closer and closer to being a year old and although she is excited to watch him grow, there's also a part of her that wishes he would stop doing it so quickly, because she's not nearly prepared at all to let him stop being a baby.

She and Ross have never really spoken about having another child, but she feels as though the possibility might still be there. Of course, they had not spoken or prepared for Julie or Jeremy either and both their wonderful children had come as a surprise to them, but she knows neither of them regret even an instant of being parents.

"Oh, they're wonderful," she says as she looks out at the children again. "Especially now, they're only playing and it seems as though when they're happy like this, they're generally well behaved." Now and then she may have to separate two children who've begun to grow cranky, but the simplest solution for that is always a bit of food and a bit of sleep.

Her smile is fully infectious as he settles down. "That's its own sort of patience," he says mildly. "When I was a little one, running free like this was I think itself a sort of ill behavior. But perhaps that's just what I remember. No one really recalls being their age, I don't think, and I'm sure I ran my mother ragged."

It's hard to separate ill feelings about parents, and obligatory debts to them, from the realities that are probably in between. Regardless, he knows his mother was not quite like Demelza, who can look at a host of little children and ascertain immediately that they're just having fun.

"It is wonderful to watch them discover things," he adds, a bit shy of his own strong feelings on allowing children to be children. "Sometimes I think children are much smarter than adults."

Children always tended to run wild over Illugan and Bodmin both, simply because there was nothing else for them to do. Eventually they would work in the mines or the pubs, but for a time they were only children and were, essentially, unable to do anything to contribute to their household. Parents couldn't put them to work when they were too young and so there was nothing for them to do but play and run about.

Demelza had done her share of it, certainly, and it wasn't that for which she'd been beaten.

"Oh, they are," she agrees enthusiastically. "They truly are. For they've not formed any biases about the state of the world and they haven't our sense of modesty. Children believe they're discovering everything for the first time, that they've only just learned something no one else in the world has ever learned before and that's wonderful to see. I wish we could all hold onto that forever. It's lovely."

His smile widens at her enthusiastic agreement, and he sits back on his hands. "Yes, exactly. They ask the questions we don't dare to, and they make up their own minds about people. The world turns us into something harder, but when they're little like this they don't know not to be excited about it."

Grantaire smiles fondly. "What about you and yours? Not just these little ones," he says, with a little wave to Julia, when she pauses to glance their way. "But outside of work as well. How have things been?"

"Oh, we're quite well," Demelza answers happily, although she doesn't know if that's entirely true. It's not untrue, of course, she is very happy, she loves Ross and loves her children. Her family is thriving, all of them healthy and doing well, but Ross is still keeping something from her. She has done everything she can to put it aside and to not let it follow her into their marriage, but there are days when it's more difficult than others.

"Ross is enjoying his job at the stables and I loved Tintern, but I find Green Gardens suits me better," she says. "And while I'm grateful to Abby when she can take the children, tis quite nice to be able to have them here with me some day. And what of you? Are 'ee well?"

He smiles to hear that; if there's more under every family's day-to-day than whether they enjoy their job, she certainly seems happy, and that's what matters to Grantaire.

"I'm glad," he says, smiling, and nods. "Green Gardens suits me better, too, though I would not have expected it," he admits. If he looks back, he can put together how frequently he's had a way with children, but each time it's seemed unlikely at best. Occasionally these days he finds himself even able to craft an idea of the future that might include them in his own life, but it's so far from the reality of their tumultous, content life, he and Edgar and Neil, right now, that he doesn't think on it too hard. "It's good to be contributing, as well."

"The beginning of the month was difficult," he adds, able to speak of it now in the sunshine with a friend. "I don't know how much you might have spoken to Marius, at Tintern. Back home, that was the anniversary of the rebellion we were both in. And the city saw fit to grant me some -- very strange dreams. But life's been getting back to normal, since."

Demelza doesn't know much about the world after she left, but France is closer to England than America and she thinks she ought to know more, especially since she's rather fond of both Grantaire and Marius. But she doesn't and so she shakes her head, looking at him with concern.

The rebellion doesn't sound familiar to her, but she believes Grantaire is from a time slightly later than she is and so she suspects this rebellion is something something that happened after her time.

"Twas not the French Revolution?" she asks. There had been unrest in France, she remembers that, and she had read about it since coming to Darrow, curious as to what the outcome might have been, but she believes Grantaire is too young for that, from a time after, though she supposes she can't be entirely certain.

"It gave you dreams?" she asks. "About this rebellion?"

He shakes his head, smiling. "No, that was before my time, guillotines and Robespierre and King Louis and such. Four decades or so and a number of rulers before any of us were thinking of barricades. But the thought is the same, a population unhappy with its rule." He waves a hand generally. "After the Revolution, and after Napoleon's rule came to an end, we were back to the monarchy. There had been a revolt a few years before, and the king had abdicated, but the throne was simply handed to a more useless king, and so it goes."

It's all very cyclical. Especially, he thinks, in France, or so it seems.

"My friends were part of a society for the rights of man. They -- we -- called themselves Friends of the A B C. A code, because Abaisse means Abased, downtrodden, and the people were treated so, so -- A, B, C, abaisse, Friends of the People, so to speak. And they spoke of a new world, a better world without monarchs thriving while people died in the street. And they were willing to die for it, to fight for a France that might have been."

He winces, remembering all too vividly. "Marius was among them, and Combeferre and Courfeyrac, if you've met them. Marius survived the battle. The rest of us did not, but here we all are." He tilts his head at her. "I was not some sort of patriot, back in my own time. No kind of leader. Just along for the ride, half in love with our leader and half with the very idea of someone able to believe so strongly. But it's been three years since I was last in France."

"And then...this June, I thought I had woken there," he admits openly. "In Paris. But Edgar was there with me too. I thought we must have disappeared from Darrow. I could taste it, smell it, speak to my friends and remember everything. But we lived through those days, and then we woke, again, back here." He shakes his head. It's still baffling, and a little terrifying if he thinks on it too long.

Edited 2017-07-24 04:29 (UTC)

The name Napoleon is only vaguely familiar to Demelza and only because of reading she has done since coming to Darrow, but she makes note of what Grantaire has said, thinking Ross might find it interesting. He had been far more invested in politics than Demelza had ever been and her only true concern with the unrest had been whether or not it might spill over into England and threaten their way of life and the safety of their family.

Ross, though, is certain to know all the ins and outs of both sides. He'd have a preference, of course, though she doesn't know what it might be and doesn't want to say as much to Grantaire anyway. Not when it's his country she would be speaking of, his history.

"Tis awful," she says when he mentions people dying in the streets. Not all that terribly different from Cornwall, she remembers what it was like to starve, to scrounge for food, to beg for what she had, and she remembers what it had been like even after that, for the miners, for their families. "So 'ee had to live through it again. Through the awful things, but with Edgar this time? That sounds like a terribly cruel thing to do to you both."

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