The mug at Barrow Press is two bits. The listening breakfast priced the same cider at fourteen, on a Manehattan hospitality chit, and the chit has not cleared. Harlan Barrow keeps the second sheet on a spike by the press: one hundred and ten mugs, three wheels of hard cheese, the south barn from dawn until the donors' train, and a total somepony ruled through and left blank.
Councilor Briony Calder spent the morning in Ash Ford, first of three ridge towns on what her office calls a sounding. She holds the Stack Ward seat in Manehattan. The Western Bench, the provincial seat that runs from the ward railhead through Ponyville and the cider ridge, opens next spring. Calder has filed no papers. Her committee has filed the catering order.
"We pressed that cider Tuesday," Barrow said. "They drank it Wednesday. The crew is on eighteen bits a day, and I would like Wednesday paid before Friday's pressing."
The committee treasurer, Sable Merrin, has already been paid. Her facilitation line, posted with the sounding budget on the ward board, came to four hundred bits and left the account the day the train was booked. The cider, the cheese, and the barn sit under a heading she described on the platform as a community match. In the posted papers a community match is a cost the host carries until certification. The papers give certification no date.
"The visibility package was approved at the ward level," Merrin said. "Vendor payment follows certification. We're building synergy, and that takes a process."
Barrow's crew had the mugs out before anyone said process. Willa Parr, who keeps the dry-goods counter two doors down, sold the committee its paper flags and a ball of twine and then closed for an hour so the picture crew could frame the press and leave the road out.
"They wanted the road out of the picture," Parr said. "The road is how the carts get here."
Her slip is smaller than Barrow's and just as open. She put it in the same drawer as the harvest tabs.
Mayor Pippin Pines stood in the frame. The town had rented the south barn for the harvest-levy meeting at forty bits, out of the ordinary works fund. The meeting moved to the mill road so the donors could sit under cover. The levy sheets took a dusting, and a clerk recopied two columns that night at six bits the hour. Pines told the clerk the visit would be short. The recopy ran two hours.
Eleven donors rode the morning train, booked through the same desk that holds the uncleared chit. They ate. They asked Barrow what the ridge needed. He said a price that matched the mug, and a road that held a cart. An aide wrote "corridor vitality" on a card and slid the card into a leather folder. The folder went back on the train with the donors.
Calder spoke for nine minutes. She named the press correctly, praised the work, and said a provincial seat should be held by a pony who had stood in the barn where the work was done. She took no questions from the crew. Questions are scheduled for Millcross, where the hall was rented at the festival rate. The hall clerk said the ordinary rate left the bunting off.
Ponyville Property Pros, which rents out the Millcross hall, confirmed the figure this morning: one hundred and eighty bits for a half day, bunting extra, due on booking. The booking stands in the committee's name. A copy went to the mayor's office in case the town preferred to host. Pines's clerk returned it with the overtime slip stapled to the corner. The ward board has sent nothing back about the staple.
On the siding, a dispatcher at Skyline Sprocket held the cider freight forty minutes so the donors' car could be hitched ahead of it. The delay went into the log at the standard rate. The cider on that freight was a standing order for a Manehattan grocer, paid last week at a little over two bits a mug, which is what it costs when the purchase is made from the pony who pressed it.
Barrow set the second sheet back on the spike before the afternoon shift. Friday's yeast is on the bench, and the eighteen-bit wage is due before the first jug is filled.
