Noggin

The noggin sat on the dresser shelf, a small cup turned from a single knot of close brown wood, no taller than a hand is wide, worn pale and smooth around the rim. Nyra took it down to measure out the barley water, for it held a quarter of a pint and no more, and three noggins filled the jug to the mark. The girl turned it over and asked how much so small a cup could truly hold. Nyra said that the measure of it was easy to write, but the holding was another matter.

You could set down the depth of the noggin, Nyra went on, and the width of the rim, and the quarter pint it carried level to the brim. A book gathers what can be set down in a line and counted, and leaves the rest to the one who was there.

For the book could not keep the warmth the wood took from a hand around it on a cold morning, nor the faint sweetness the grain had gathered from a long life of barley water and milk. It could not keep the way the worn rim fit the lip, smoother than any new cup from the turner. It could not keep the count of plain days the little cup had served without once being thought about at all.

The girl ran a thumb around the pale rim and saw that the noggin gave the page only its quarter pint, and kept the rest for the hand and the lip and the long quiet use. She filled it level and drank, and found the barley water tasted of nothing but itself. Nyra took the empty cup and set it back on its shelf.

The book keeps the measure of the noggin, and you keep the drinking of it.