Late in the afternoon of that same day Rooster Davis rode over to see Deborah alone. They were old friends who easily bridged their difference in age by a common interest in the land, but the half hour they now spent together consisted largely of pauses and silences. Neither smiled nor ever looked directly at the other. Rooster conveyed to Deborah his parents’ distress and concern and said that he had been most particularly commissioned by his wife Trudy to offer her services in any way she might be useful. After the longest pause, Rooster got up from his chair and took his leave, without anything’s having been achieved.

Bonard came over every day and begged to be allowed to see and talk to Selma, but when Deborah endeavored to persuade her to this, Selma became morbidly excited and ran about her room like a bird trying to escape its cage. Lovey was at last sent for and succeeded in quieting the girl by promising her that she would never be forced to see Bonard again unless she herself wished it.

The invalid’s body healed itself, but Lovey slept on a cot in her room every night, because Selma had dreams and woke screaming or sobbing, or worse, did not wake, but whimpered fearfully in her sleep until Lovey shook her awake and then rocked her in her embrace to calm her enough to try sleep again.

It was a busy time of the year, and the Negroes worked long and hard every day in the fields except Sunday. In the course of days, although they did not forget her, they naturally spoke of her less often than they had at the beginning of her trouble and accepted the fact that she kept to her room, not even venturing to take her meals in the dining room with the family.

Selma may have grown stronger in body, but she seemed to be no healthier in mind. Nell, whom she refused to see, wailed pitifully that she was sure she had done all she could for the child and then ordered Felix to have her conveyed back to their house in Highboro. As she and Deborah parted at the front door, Nell gave expression to a sudden notion. “Why don’t you ask Miss Pennington and her nieces to come and visit? Perhaps they might distract Selma from her grief and painful memories.” Deborah said she would think about it and waited to watch the carriage drive away through the orchard and on to the main road.

Selma always knew when Bonard paid his calls to the house. Although she refused to see him, his very presence at Beulah Land made for too much agitation for her, and finally Deborah, prompted by Lovey, begged Bonard to space his visits farther apart, if not to give them up altogether, to come only when she sent to him to say it was all right.