After that, Mom swore off men for a while, but after a couple of months 
she met a guy named Brad who was actually
nice. He had a real job as a blacksmith in the New Atlantis Clave, and one day 
he took Nell to work with him and showed her how he nailed iron shoes onto the 
hooves of the horses. This was the first time Nell had actually seen a horse, 
and so she did not pay much attention to Brad and his hammers and nails. Brad's 
employers had a giant house with vast green fields, and they had four kids, all 
bigger than Nell, who would come out in fancy clothes and ride those 
horses.