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They all laughed.
Just then, someone else approached them. It was Haze.
“Don’t let me ever tell you you’re not pulling your weight around here again,” he said to Mabel. “We were in need of some more entertainment around here, and this has gone down perfectly. In fact,” he paused, “how would you two like to put on a puppet show at this year’s Christmas fair?”
“There’s a Christmas fair?” asked Mabel.
“There sure is,” replied Haze.
“Oooh, what kind of stuff will be there? A Santa’s grotto? A parade? Festive snacks?”
Haze tapped his nose as if to sayit’s a secret. “You’ll see soon enough,” he said. “Let’s just say Liberty doesn’t do things by halves.” He paused, looking around the puppet theater, and then gazing out the window, at the rest of the town. The miniature railway, the bath house, the farm, the surgery, the vets, the whole wonderful lot of it. “Liberty has grown so much in the short time since I moved here. And it’s going tokeepgrowing with good people like you around.”
Rip looked at Mabel and he smiled. For a while, they’d worried that they wouldn’t be welcome here, after everything that had happened. Now, they felt integral to the place. Like Liberty wouldn’t be the same without them.
“We’d love to do the Christmas carnival,” replied Rip. “We can even make a stall and sell a few puppets to the locals too.”
“You think you can manage that in time?” asked Haze.
“We’ll survive,” said Rip, grinning.
Mabel nudged him. “No, Daddy,” she said. “We’ll do more than that. We’llthrive.”
* * *
