"So there it is." Arnulf recapped the pertinent facts, "Anna is probably assuming you are going to marry her someday. Wolmirstedt is assuming we will take responsibility for the girl, even if there never was a formal betrothal. So! What are you going to do about Anna?"

Paulus blinked. As he thought about it he realized, somewhere, not far from where his id hid from his ego, he still assumed he would one day marry Anna Schmidt. This was perhaps part of the reason why dating was not something he had taken an interest in, no matter how many girls threw themselves at him. He was a plain-looking fellow, and no one had been particularly interested in him before he went into business. Now he assumed it was his money they were interested in. This was a perfectly reasonable reason for them to be interested in him, when one looked at it logically. But, now that he dragged his unexamined thoughts into the light of day, he found that his logic had been corrupted by up-time romantic thought. On the one hand, if they didn't want anything to do with him before, he didn't want anything to do with them now. On the other hand, in another unlit crack or cranny, one that had not been corrupted by Grantville's improbable and improper ways, dating was courting, and he was ten years away from being old enough to have a family of his own and therefore he had no reason to be courting anyone, not to mention the expense of doing so. These were the first assumptions he looked at. His second thoughts were of Anna herself. He hadn't seen her in over five years. His father had collected him from Herr Schmidt's shop on his way out of town. Herr Schmidt had decided to stay and hide and thought his apprentice should stay with him. Paulus tried to conjure an idea of what she might look like now. He couldn't get past the picture of a scrawny redheaded lass standing under her mother's hand, while his father and her father yelled at each other.

Still, the idea that she would one day be his wife was, upon reflection, just as comfortable in the light of day as it was lurking in the dark shadows. His father was absolutely right. He was more than capable of supporting a wife and family. His father had no idea just how true that was. When they had found the stash of aged moonshine they did not tell their parents because they feared their parents would take the money and use it to leave Grantville. Instead they invested it. Now, after all this time, telling them would be difficult.

Paulus blinked again. "If we are going to play this by Grantville rules, and apparently we are or you would be telling me what to do instead of asking, then Anna will have something to say about it. I suppose I ought to go find out."

His father nodded. "I suppose you should."

"But, even by Grantville rules, we'd have to wait. She's not sixteen yet," Paulus said.

"She can get married at fifteen, with parental consent," his brother Ebert pointed out.

Paulus turned to Ebert. "Well, we can't burn that bridge until we get there. If she says yes, we can find her a place to stay here in town and she can work in the mushrooms if she can't find something else, while we work out the details. If she doesn't say yes, then we will see if a stay in Grantville might not change her mind."

Ebert smirked, "What's the point of asking her if you're not going to accept her ans-"

The words, "Shut up Ebert," were accompanied by an elbow in the ribs.

Magdeburg, early spring 1636

Some days Anna could turn her mind off and think of nothing but cutting shoe parts out of the hide in front of her. It made the twelve-hour workday go faster. And some days she couldn't. This was one of those days.

The millwright and the mechanic were assembling a stamping press for cutting uppers like the one already in use for cutting the soles. They might not get as many units out of a hide as they did when they cut them by hand, since they'd be cutting several hides at once, but the savings on labor would make up for the loss on the materials. Besides, they were getting a good price, a very good price, on scrap leather. Once they'd chopped it into tiny bits, the gunsmiths were using it for bluing barrels and they could sell all they had. The cutters and the kids tracing the patterns for the cutters to cut had been told not to worry. "No one is going to lose their job. We'll still be cutting the odd sizes by hand and some of you will move up to other jobs because output will go up."

Her mind went back to the days in Wolmirstedt, when she was a little girl and she had a mother and a father and knew she would one day marry her father's apprentice and keep the house while he kept the shop. Then came Tilly's men. Paulus' father took him and fled. Momma got sick and died that first winter when there was so very little to eat. Her father caught a fever and died just a few months ago.

There was no one to take over the shoemaker's shop. Where there had once been two shoemakers in town before Tilly's men, now the town was about one-fourth of the size it had been before and there wasn't enough business in Wolmirstedt to keep even a single shoemaker busy. It didn't help that the people could buy shoes out of the Wish Book cheaper than her father could make them. With no one to run the shop, Anna moved to Magdeburg and got a job in one of the shoe mills. It was either that or starve. The town council told her they couldn't support another charity case.

Anna's thoughts went from worrying about the future to dreaming the impossible dream, Adolf's dream. Before she met Adolf, she dreamed Paulus' family would return to Wolmirstedt, that they would take her in and she would, in due time, marry him and he would run the shop in Wolmirstedt. Now it was a different dream.

Adolf, his sister, and his mother lived in the same two room apartment she did, along with sixteen other people. He had almost been a journeyman before Tilly's men came through. He was sure he could make a living in Wolmirstedt if he could get one of the heavy machines for sewing the uppers onto the soles like he was running now, and one of the light machines for sewing uppers. He had in mind a style of shoe not found in the Wish Book. He'd seen it in a used clothing store. It was from Grantville and it was a baker's shoe, called a loafer. It was suitable for a townsman who didn't want to wear the heavy work boot like the ones the mill was making for the army, and sure didn't want to wear a wooden shoe like a peasant. He'd have to cart them to market in Magdeburg or somewhere else not run by the guilds. And if anyone ever opened a mill making them, he might be out of business. Still, Adolf had a dream and she and her father's shop were now part of it. When she couldn't turn her mind off, the dream was often the only thing she had to keep her going.

Anna heard voices. One was the plant manager. He was escorting someone through the mill. This meant some bigwig, usually a shoe buyer, sometimes a shareholder. But the bigwig was too young to be a shoe buyer. He was little more than a lad of a boy; he was very plainly dressed to be someone important like a shareholder and yet his voice was oddly, distantly, familiar.

"You can see we are nearly done assembling the new stamping press for cutting uppers. We are expecting a fifteen percent increase in production once the new press is on line. And over here is the old cutting area."

Anna took a second look at the bigwig. Her mouth fell open. "Paulus?" Her hand flew to her mouth. But it was already too late. The name was out. The plant manager turned to look at her with a frown on his face. The idea of someone on the floor addressing one of his guests greatly annoyed him. His people should be concentrating on their work. They shouldn't even notice he was there.