Sugar of Beulah Land had courted Violet of Oaks successfully, and they had been married to each other in the dining room at Oaks. When offered the arrangement that had been made on such matters in the past between the two plantations, the choice of their living together at one or the other, they demurred. They were perfectly happy living as they were, they said. They saw each other quite enough as present occasions provided. Each delighted in meeting the other, and neither sorrowed at parting.

The occasion of the meeting today was a family picnic for the children of Oaks and Beulah Land. Sarah had said to Edna that it would be pleasant to spend a day not thinking about the serious working of the two plantations. Edna had promptly suggested that they—and Adam and James and Doreen and Annabel, and Rachel and her nurse Juanita—spend a day in a pine grove they all knew, between their plantations and town, a piece of land that belonged to neither family and was considered common ground because there was a small, old, now-abandoned burying ground on it.

Edna said to Violet, “Gather the children; I’ll go see the baskets are ready.”

There was no hurrying. It was summer, everything planted and coming to fruition in God s time, nothing yet harvested except for the table fruits and vegetables that were taken every day from garden and orchard but had not yet appeared in such abundance as suggested preserving for winter use. All there was to do was tending, checking the grass and weeds and insects, watching the sky and hoping for the impossible; no rain on this field of cotton, a fair rain on that of corn to keep it juicy and sweet, and a lot of rain on the sugar cane, alternating with hours of hot sun, to best mature it.

Two mules drew the large wagon, the largest Beulah Land boasted. Sugar sat on the driver’s seat with Sarah beside him. She wore a comfortable cotton frock open at the neck, and a crisp starched sun bonnet to shield her head and eyes from the heat and glare of the day. In the main body of the wagon were half a dozen cane-bottomed chairs, on one of which Juanita sat primly, hands folded in her lap, as she consciously enjoyed her outing. The other chairs were empty. Roman sat at the open back end, or tail gate, dangling his legs; and beside him Rachel sat dangling hers, although there wasn’t much of them to dangle. Rachel had refused to leave Beulah Land without Roman.