From Londoner To Lord

She saw that the whole family of Mr Kigeir was quickly walking towards them, looking quite happy, with Elsie and her younger brother in the lead, who started running when they saw her and Timmy.

But why? Why were they here again? Maisy was confused. They looked happy as well. Didn't they already forget about her and Timmy? Then why were they coming here?

But then Elsie reached closer and ran towards her and hugged her tightly, with Maisy barely managing to keep standing from the force.

"Maisy!" her best friend bawled into her shoulder. "You can come back with us!"

"What?" Maisy looked around in confusion, and saw that the two younger kids also seemed to be crying while trying to punch each other at the same time... Perhaps it was a way of showing how much they cared about each other?

Elsie took a step back and looked at her face. "You can live with us now! Papa asked some bigwig and he allowed it!"

Maisy blinked in surprise, her heart beating loudly. Was that really possible? Could she and Timmy really go back to live with them again? Elsie wouldn't joke about that, right?

Then she looked behind Elsie, and saw Mr Kigeir and his wife also reaching there with wet eyes and huge smiles on their faces. Were they crying as well? But why?

Reaching closer, Elsie's mom bent down and pulled all four children closer and hugged them, while starting to cry openly.

After a moment, Elsie's mom looked at her. "I am sorry, Maisy! I am so sorry that we let you both go away from us! Please forgive us! I will never let that happen again!"

What was happening? Maisy didn't know what to think about, although her eyes had also started tearing up without her permission.

Was it really true? Was this really happening or had she fallen asleep near the swing and started dreaming?

After a while, Elsie's mom stood up, while still holding her and Timmy, and looked at them in the same way that she looked at her own children. "You can come live with us now," she said. "Both of you."

Maisy's mind had seemed to have stopped working by now and she couldn't think properly. Her heart had realized what was happening, but her brain still refused to accept it. She tried to say something but her voice had stopped working too. And all the time Elsie had been clutching her from her side, while Timmy was still holding her hand.

She felt a lump in her throat, but then swallowed to get her voice working again. "Is it," she whispered, "is it really true? You are not leaving us here?"

Elsie's mom started crying again, and bent down again to clutch all the children once more. "Yes it's true! And don't you worry, I will never let you go away again! You both are also my children from today." She looked at her and Timmy for a moment and grinned with teary eyes. "You both have a mother and father too from today."

Maisy blinked her eyes, trying to clear them at least a little bit, and looked at Mr Kigeir, who had been standing nearby while rubbing his eyes. When he noticed the question in her eyes, he gave a smile and nodded.

At this point, Maisy's brain simply gave up any more protests, and she began crying openly as well while holding Elsie's mom tightly. And before long, Timmy and other children joined her as well in another group hug.

She didn't know how long it took for all of them to calm down, but eventually she wiped her eyes and saw that Elsie's mom - no! her mom! - was looking at all of them lovingly. Then she looked at Mr Kigeir - no, she looked at papa! - who gave a nod.

He wiped his eyes as well, and gazed at all four children for a moment with a smile. Then he grinned. "Come on children. Let's go home!" He held the hands of both boys, while Elsie's mom - no! her mom! - held the hands of the girls, and they started walking towards the gates of the longhouse block.

Maisy's heart was still beating too fast. Even though she had realized by now that it wasn't a dream, she was still surprised that somebody would even care about orphans like her, whom nobody used to give a second glance in the past, even if they were hungry or homeless. But it seemed like things were finally changing for them now, since they weren't really orphans anymore, were they? It still felt weird for her to think of that, but perhaps good things could really happen to people like her and Timmy in this village...

As they exited the gates and turned towards the village to go to their home - to her home - she looked back at the huge building, and couldn't stop tears from falling from her eyes again. This place had been her home for less than an hour, but it was always going to be one of her most favorite places in the village, no matter where she lived.

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This was where she had found her new parents, after all.

*******

~ Kivamus ~

~ Baron's manor ~

It was late evening now, and It had been two days since the longhouse block had been completed. Thankfully the shifting of villagers had gone without any major incident yesterday. There were still a few scuffles about the choice of bunks, as well as the decision about who would have to stay on the floor, but Duvas had been able to resolve it by himself. They had also transferred a decent amount of grain and coal to the storeroom of the block, as an advance on the weekly grain quota they were giving the laborers.

This meant that apart from a few exceptions, they also wouldn't have to pay any extra grain to those who had been acting as temporary innkeepers by taking in the previously homeless people. The amount of food that the maids had to cook had also gone down significantly, with the meals of the majority of the elderly and children being prepared in the kitchen of the longhouse block from yesterday.

Earlier today, the jail room had also been completed by Taniok and a few other laborers with the help of the log-mover. It was a simple enough room made of logs, with wooden bars on its only window, and a way to securely lock the doors from the outside, so any prisoners wouldn't be able to escape this time. Hopefully, Feroy would be able to find the culprit of Sejkil's death soon, and the jail wouldn't have to stay empty for too long.

He took a deep breath. The completion of the longhouse block was a good start for all the construction he wanted to do in the village. But it was only a start. There was still a lot to do.

As he gazed at the others sitting inside the manor hall with a satisfactory smile on everyone's faces, he remembered something. He wanted to see a line of factories running in this village in the future, but that simply won't work if basically every single worker was illiterate. Even if it might not be feasible to make them as knowledgeable as an employable college graduate on Earth, the villagers still needed to know a lot more than what they did currently.

He looked at others. "Duvas, I have been thinking about something for a while, and I think now we have a good opportunity to act on it."

"What is it, my Lord?" the majordomo asked.

Gorsazo and Feroy looked at him curiously as well.

"How many people would you say are literate in the village?" Kivamus asked.

Duvas thought about it for a moment. "I haven't personally asked every villager about this, but I don't think there are more than a handful of them - mainly the merchants and shopkeepers - who can do some basic reading and writing. Apart from them, the rest of the villagers won't be able to even write their own name."

"That's mostly what I expected," Kivamus muttered. He gazed at everyone. "But this is something that I want to change from now. I want to start a part-time school..." Seeing the confused look on the faces of Feroy and Duvas, he elaborated, "uh, a place where everyone will be taught about reading and writing in the longhouse block. It wasn't feasible earlier, but now we have a place where a lot of villagers will be gathered together, so this will be a good chance for us to start educating them." He added, "And I don't mean educating just the children. I also want the adults to get educated, no matter how old they are."

"But... why?" Duvas asked with a frown. "What would the villagers even do with that knowledge? Shouldn't they be using that time to work and earn for their families? And only noble's children get educated anyway. What use would a commoner have for such knowledge anyway? They don't need to be able to read to cut a tree or do any farming work."

"I agree with him, milord," Feroy commented. He added with a snort, "I can't differentiate my own written name from a bear's scratch marks on a fedarus bark, but that hasn't stopped me from slitting a bandit's throat whenever I've needed to, you know?" Then he scoffed, "And why would anyone choose to get educated? I wouldn't want to stare at a Goddess' damned parchment for hours if my life depended on it!"

Gorsazo remained quiet, but he was looking at Kivamus with a knowing glance. While his old teacher still barely knew anything about life on earth, he was always curious to learn more from him, and Kivamus kept telling him stories about the kind of wonders which people took for granted on earth. And he had always emphasized to Gorsazo that more and more people getting educated had been one of the major catalysts of all the inventions and improvements on Earth.

It was certainly true that only a very small percentage of people had been the ones who had invented the majority of things in the very beginning of the Earth's industrial revolution, but you could never know who would turn out to be that kind of genius. For any of that to happen, they needed at least the very basics of knowledge and education. And that's what he wanted to provide here. So he knew that he could count on Gorsazo's support in this for certain.

He explained, "I don't want this village to be dependent just on selling coal in the future. It is simply not a very reliable source of income, not to mention it is barely profitable, seeing the state of the village when I arrived here."

Duvas nodded on hearing about the low profitability of coal mining, but didn't say anything.

Kivamus continued, "And I have a lot of plans to change that in the future after we have managed to grow our own grain from next year. But for that, I will need a much better educated workforce, or at least one where the workers are not completely illiterate."

Seeing that the majordomo still looked unconvinced, he asked, "Tell me Duvas, how did you become the majordomo of this manor?"