Those at the table in the big house ate boiled peas and thin corn bread every day too but added to it such items of food as sliced tomatoes, squash, snap beans or butter beans, corn cut off the cob and roasted in the oven, and—always—rice. There was also, almost daily, chicken: fried, roasted, or cut up in a pie with dumplings. And after that they ate berry or peach pies, and they drank quantities of tea. As if providing all of this immediately consumed food was not enough, the kitchen women were busy making jellies and jams and preserves and putting up jars of tomatoes and cucumber pickles, and beets and hot peppers and all the other vegetables that lent themselves to preservation in any way for winter use.

Sarah spoke truly when she said it was the busiest time at Beulah Land, and she was in her glory—here, there, everywhere, drunk with all the activity until she felt that she was spinning through the hot days like a whirling dervish and might spin on forever, because it was easier to go on than to stop. Yet in this feverish time when action seemed to beget more action, and energy came from the very heat that sapped them all in tamer times, she found time to keep track of her Aunts Penelope and Nell, her Uncle Felix, to know how Selma and Pauline felt and fared, to spend ten minutes with Roman here, with Rachel there, or more often with both together, for of all the inhabitants of Beulah Land there was least for them to do. Sarah also found time to be hostess to Casey Troy, who himself had little freedom, so busy was he with his commissions.

Sarah, and Leon when he could come home from Highboro, saw Casey mainly at the second and third meals of the day, dinner at noon and supper in the early evening. But sometimes Sarah saw him at odd moments. Although keeping close to the house where his work required him to be, he slipped out now and then to look about the fields and barns. She would see him come back with shirt collar open and shirt struck to his back and arms with sweat and sweat beads on his eyebrows and mustache and the hair at his temples and around his ears, but he would come back smiling with exhilaration.

No one was sick, no one died. There was no time. Every sense was heightened. The words and laughter of children sounded sweet on the ear. Food tasted good and lay easy in the belly. There was more sexual doing than at other time of the year. Everything was used. Everyone was harvested.

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