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Toby slept most of the way from wherever it was Mr Venom picked him up until they reached the farm, and even then, he was still pretty groggy. The washroom was pointed out to him (and what a wonder that is, all shining and clean and good clean hot water right there without having to pump it or heat it on the fire or anything), and Toby did manage to scrub the mud off his face and shuck the outermost, muddiest layers of his clothes.

The kitchen seems like the best place for him, but when he finds it, he decides that it, like the washroom, is too posh for him to use much unless he has to or he's told to. Besides, there's not a proper fire going anywhere in the kitchen, and if there's one thing Toby really wants to find, it's someplace warm. A lot has happened lately-- too much to really, really take in, even-- and if he could just find somewhere warm and easy to sit for a while, to think things through... well, it can't hurt and might help.

He figures, though, that nobody's going to miss just one apple from the bowl, not if what Mr Venom told him about how many people live here is true.

If someone should wander in to tell the lad otherwise, he'll be most appropriately shamefaced-- especially since he's already taken a great big bite out of it.

((The usual note about spoilers applies-- let me know whether you want them or not or don't care.))

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"That works," Mel agrees. "And yeah, might as well be magic. Got 'em all over at home, and I don't know how they work."

Toby is struck by an urge to find out, just to know. Most things, where he's from, are pretty easy to figure out how they work-- especially if you were raised in a workhouse and wound up doing a lot of the work that other people didn't want to do.

"What sorts of things might happen?" Toby asks. "That look like magic, so I'm on my guard for 'em. Already know them carriages-- cars-- are nicer inside than out."

"Should go in my sister's," Mel says cheerfully. "It flies."

Toby's head goes clonk against the top of the oven. After a yelp and a cuss and a "Sorry--" because there's a lady present, and even if she doesn't really want to be thought of as a lady there's a baby present, and Toby, with wide eyes, says "Really flies?"

Mel laughs quickly and smirks at him.

"Not magic either, but pretty cool."

"How d'you tell the difference between the stuff that's magic and the stuff that's not magic but is things like flying carriages?"

Toby is now quite sure he's not in Hell. He's pretty certain Hell isn't this weird.

"You need to?" Mel asks.

Then she shrugs. "Person with it'll probably tell you. I mean, I dunno all the stuff about combustion and aerofoils, but I'm pretty sure we had scientists on it, not wizards."

"S'pose I don't need to, but it does make me likely to stare an awful lot." Toby rubs the back of his head.

It's not bleeding and it's probably not going to raise a lump, but it smarts.

"Probably get used to it," Mel says easily. "Everyone does."

"... Does it take long?"

Mel shakes her head. "Nah."

"Right glad of that, anyway," he says, sincerely indeed. "S'pose your girls will grow up ready for anything, won't they?"

"Guess so," Mel says proudly, beeping Hana's nose. "And if I can help it, able to deal with anything, too."

"That's a good thing, bein' able to deal with anything." Toby tries not to sound too terribly serious.

Mel sounds like a good mother.

She is in theory. Most good mothers don't kill in front of their children. Though perhaps Toby would understand that.

"It is," Mel grins again, and hugs Hana until the girl protests. "Not like I can just protect them from everything, but I'm gonna try."

All the best mothers would if they had to, after all, and Toby does indeed understand doing things because you have to.

"If... If they're real smart," Toby says, carefully, "When they're old enough, maybe they can protect themselves."

Well. They're girls, true, but Toby knows how hard a woman can work and how hard a woman can hit when she's got a mind to. And he knows if Mrs Lovett hadn't wanted so bad to believe something that wasn't as true as she thought it was...

... Well, things might have turned out a bit different for Toby and he might not have gotten flashed into this odd world with quite so many belongings.

"Don't doubt it," Mel says confidently. "Got anything of their Mom or Dad in them, they'll take care of themselves."

"That's good, then," he agrees. "Strong parents ought to make for strong children, right?" Well, Mel's sure got a strong personality, anyway.

Mel blinks, because it hadn't occured to her he's talking about her personality, and her strength isn't genetic.

Them she grins.

"Yeah, that's what I'm hoping."

Well, she's also not too fat, not too thin, and not strapped into a corset and weighted down by skirts and petticoats, either (and even though it looks funny and immodest, it also looks a lot more sensible, especially with twin babies). To Toby, that looks pretty strong, too.

"Gotta wonder about my own, sometimes." He says it philosophically, and offers Hana a funny face into the bargain.

Hana shrieks in delight and tries to copy the face, clumsily.

"Parents or children?" Mel asks, smiling now because Hana's happy.

"Parents," and Toby laughs just a bit himself, and makes another face for Hana. This one involves waggling eyebrows. "Workhouse boy, me, so all I know about 'em is that they was poor."

Wriggling eyebrows are the funniest thing ever, though apparently Hana also thnks they're good dinosaur food, because she's trying to get at them with Dino.

Mel, on the other hand, is listening to Toby.

"We don't have them in Haddyn," she says. "After Mom left us, it was up to my sister Erin to raise us."

"Oh, he's gonna get 'em, is he? Well, we'll see if he can catch 'em, then!" Toby doesn't stop waggling his eyebrows, no, but he does dodge the dinosaur, moving his head this way and that.

Pretty slowly. And not by much.

It's no fun if she can't get at him, right?

"Mum went in cos she couldn't get work anywhere else," Toby says, not unsmiling-- still playing with the baby, see. "Sort of a rule. If you need the workhouse, you can't take care of yourself, let alone your kids."

So the workhouse took them and raised them.

Maybe it's not really right, but it's better than really starving.

BEST. GAME. EVER.

Or since yesterday, at least. Hana stops attakcing him just long enough to clap her hands, which means Dino is dropped.

"Makes sense," Mel says thoughtfully, not having read anything along the lines of Dickens for cultural prejudice against it.

"Better than starving."