She spends most of the afternoon in the house writing, and some of it watching him to see what the tasks of this life are. The tasks of this life seem to involve a lot of... dirt. She's not sure she approves, but she's no longer rich so she'd better get used to it.

It's a good thing it's fall rather than spring, which involves a lot more dirt than this. He doesn't seem to mind it, in any case - he's not cheerful about his work, exactly, but he's quietly satisfied, and sings to himself sometimes. Or narrates some of his tasks to her in Polish if she comes close enough to talk to, on the general principle that it might be useful practice.

He doesn't ask her to do anything, except maybe offering her a handful of grain to toss to the chickens if she's around for that. Children tend to enjoy trying that - he's not at all sure she will, but she might make an interesting face about it.

She makes her usual face, but she does toss the grain to the chickens, and impassively observe their response.

The chickens are wary of the strange new person, but very excited about the food. (Clearly nobody around here has high culinary standards.)

"Maybe you could behead one of those, at some point," he offers. "If you don't mind it not ending up in a mausoleum." There's more than a dozen, and he does eat them sometimes, so why not, really. He guesses it might be more interesting to her than feeding them.

"I would like that."

"Very good." He looks happy to have identified a rare thing she likes rather than just tolerates. (And awards himself another three Wednesday Points.) "On Sunday, probably."

"Hmm, and what do you think about fishing?" It seems less Wednesday-ish, intuitively, but it does involve killing things...

"My father and brother love to fish. I don't mind it but I wouldn't seek it out."

"Huh, I guessed it wasn't as interesting to you, but I wasn't sure. Maybe I'm getting better at guessing." He seems a little pleased about that.

"Yes, it seems you are."

He smiles at her, then ducks into the chicken coop to look for eggs. He scrambles them for dinner with onions, tomatoes and chives from the garden. (And bread and butter, which at least indicate he does eat things he didn't produce on his own.)  That comes out pretty good, being simple food with fresh ingredients, and leaves a frying pan, two plates and some silverware for her to wash if she decides to do that. (Marek doesn't mention it, just doesn't immediately do it himself.)

Dinner is surprisingly pleasant but not so much so that she's moved to comment unprompted. It might show on her face a little.

She does wash the dishes afterward, with probably more attention to detail than these dishes really warrant, and accordingly slower than Marek would.

He does pay enough attention to her expressions that it might result in an improvement in his cooking over time.

He thanks her for dealing with the dishes and doesn't evince any opinion on her speed.

Once she's done: "Do you want to try on the, ah, acceptable clothes, and see which ones fit? Most probably won't, but I can make things shorter and so on, that should help." He doesn't think he has enough to put together a reasonable 3-5 outfits in her exact size, even without the color restriction, and he would really prefer to avoid buying more - the orphanage is supposed to give him a stipend but it usually doesn't happen - but it's the sort of problem he can usually solve with a bit of work, and he doesn't mind that.

"Yes, that seems reasonable. Are there more clothes in the room I didn't choose? I could look through those and see if there's anything more in black and white."

"There are, let's go see."  Her room contains the sorts of clothes he conceptualizes as belonging in dressers, so shirts, pants, skirts, nightgowns/pyjamas and tights and so on, and the other room contains the sorts of clothes he conceptualizes as belonging on hangers in a wardrobe, so coats and dresses and suits (there's only one suit, black but much too big for her). He should perhaps either acquire more furniture or stop sorting them this way, now that he thinks about it.

He leaves her to try things on, but sits in his bedroom so he can provide comments on how much adjustment is doable, if she comes out to ask.

Counting things that can be hemmed or narrowed to fit (which Marek seems to think he can do quite a lot of), they end up with three white blouses in various styles, one boys' button-down shirt in white and one in black, two white t-shirts (one plain and one with a black heart outline on the front), a checkered black-and-grey long-sleeved flannel shirt, a black knitted vest and a grey sweater, two black skirts (one ruffled and one plain) and a grey polka-dotted one, two pairs of black pants, grey shorts, two white summery dresses, an odd long-sleeved white satin dress that might be identifiable as someone's First Communion outfit, a black wool coat, and plenty of white socks and tights and underwear since for children they only come in white anyway.  And three times as many things that absolutely won't fit, but hopefully she can identify those by sight without having to try them all on.

She sorts it all into neatly organized piles and inventories them with an eye to future outfit assembly. Shirts: eight, that seems like plenty. Skirts and pants: five and a half (shorts are a questionable concept), that seems reasonable but not ideal. Dresses: three or four, counting the one she's wearing and with some uncertainty about how to count the fancy one. This having been established, she goes back through the unacceptably colourful clothing to see if she can find any skirts or pants that have little enough colour it could be bleached out of them, or maybe cut out if something is mostly white with patches of colour, or anything like that; and she goes through the things that definitely don't fit to see if there's anything that could potentially be patched together into one more usable skirt. She also keeps half an eye out for another potentially salvageable vest or sweater as she goes; having one each of those is enough to be going on with, but she'd like to have one or two more.

There's a terribly colorful skirt that upon closer inspection turns out to be a perfectly acceptable white skirt with terribly colorful ruffles, a charcoal one with a lot of pink embroidery one might  patiently pick out (and maybe even redo in a more acceptable color), greyish-brown pants that could perhaps be bleached, a black sweater with blue sleeves and hem which seems like it should be possible to convert into a black vest, and a few much larger skirts or nightgowns that could probably be cut down into a skirt her size, skirts not being complicated garments.

(There's also a white nightgown and grey pyjamas in her size, which the author forgot to include in the previous list because there are really too many types of clothes.)

She reports these findings to Marek and says she wouldn't mind picking out all that embroidery (and all those ruffles) herself if he has a seam ripper or a suitable pair of small scissors or, failing that, a small sharp knife. On consideration she'd rather not butcher larger garments to make smaller ones just yet, but she'll set aside all the much-too-big acceptable clothes in case of future need.

He has not heard of the concept of a seam ripper and needs it explained to him, but he does have small sharp scissors and approves of her intended usage. (And asks her to save the ruffles in case they're useful for something else later.)

He asks to see which clothes do fit properly so he'll know the size to use for the other ones, and gets started on the quicker adjustments. He's no seamstress, but he was a soldier in the "it's your job to maintain your uniform and keep it presentable and you won't get a new one any time soon" era, so he knows the basics well enough, and has plenty of black and white thread in contrast to a much more uneven supply of colors. He owns an iron, and starts out by pinning and ironing the hems on all the too-long things to what should be about the right length - and asking her to check if it's what she wants, since she seems to care about details rather a lot. Well, she is a girl, even if she mostly doesn't act much like one. And on second consideration, he's not exactly an expert on girls.

She is quietly pleased to be consulted for approval on where to hem things to, and has fairly exact opinions on the matter which she delivers with precision and endless patience. In between consultations she starts in on the Abominable Ruffles, taking care not to damage them too badly in the removal process since Marek said to save them.

He notices the positive reaction, and continues to consult her on various details as they come up. He's also very patient about getting things right - there's no hurry, and it's perfectly nice work to spend several evenings doing. She may have picked up by now that he just likes having something useful to do.

They can sit companionably by the living room fireplace with their sewing and ruffle-removal, and Wednesday can be taught various clothing-related Polish words if she'd like.

What an unexpectedly agreeable way to spend an evening.

Marek agrees entirely.

Sometime after 9 he'll point out that it's late and she should probably head to bed, if she doesn't do it on her own first.

"Is there a good reason to go to bed this early?"

He considers it for a moment. "Normally you'd be going to school in the morning, but you're not, so I suppose there isn't. What time were you planning on?"

"Midnight."