And he’d touched her, hmm, her leg, and that had been what made her make a scene. The words she’d heard before, filed them away to figure out later, the look too, but the hoof... She’d told Pa, and he’d just grumbled, so she’d told Ma, and she’d explained a bit, but Smith knew pretty well when she was being lied to (‘even by omission’—her hypocrite mother), so she’d asked her friend Tea Spout about it, and eventually got an answer. Now here she was, and it was night, and Apple Rose asleep, and the carrot looked suddenly quite intimidating.
and oof, again, not enough pieces to fit together into the details of what exactly happened but enough to understand them. and argh, the contrast with the innocence of the previous chapter makes this hit all the more harder, even moreso that this is only the 13th chapter...
it's just awful, and i can't dwell on this line of thought for too long at a time