Grantville Gazette 45

"So there it is." Arnulf recapped the pertinent facts, "A

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 A

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 A

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 A

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, A

A

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 ru

A

"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."

A