“He’ll never get the smell of pigs out,” Liza said firmly. “There’s a pungency left by a pig that nothing can wash out or cover up.”

“Well, I went inside and looked around, Mother, and I could smell nothing except paint.”

“When the paint dries you’ll smell pig,” she said.

“He’s got a garden laid out with spring water running through it, and he’s set a place apart for flowers, roses and the like, and some of the bushes are coming clear from Boston.”

“I don’t see how the Lord God puts up with such waste,” she said grimly. “Not that I don’t like a rose myself.”

“He said he’d try to root some cuttings for me,” Samuel said.

Tom finished his hot cakes and stirred his coffee. “What kind of a man is he, Father?”

“Well, I think he’s a fine man—has a good tongue and a fair mind. He’s given to dreaming—”

“Hear now the pot blackguarding the kettle,” Liza interrupted.

“I know, Mother, I know. But have you ever thought that my dreaming takes the place of something I haven’t? Mr. Trask has practical dreams and the sweet dollars to make them solid. He wants to make a garden of his land, and he will do it too.”

“What’s his wife like?” Liza asked.

“Well, she’s very young and very pretty. She’s quiet, hardly speaks, but then she’s having her first baby soon.”

“I know that,” Liza said. “What was her name before?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, where did she come from?”

“I don’t know.”

She put his plate of hot cakes in front of him and poured coffee in his cup and refilled Tom’s cup. “What did you learn then? How does she dress?”

“Why, very nice, pretty—a blue dress and a little coat, pink but tight about the waist.”

“You’ve an eye for that. Would you say they were made clothes or store bought?”

“Oh, I think store bought.”

“You would not know,” Liza said firmly. “You thought the traveling suit Dessie made to go to San Jose was store bought.”

“Dessie’s the clever love,” said Samuel. “A needle sings in her hands.”

Tom said, “Dessie’s thinking of opening a dressmaking shop in Salinas.”

“She told me,” Samuel said. “She’d make a great success of it.”

“Salinas?” Liza put her hands on her hips. “Dessie didn’t tell me.”

“I’m afraid we’ve done bad service to our dearie,” Samuel said. “Here she wanted to save it for a real tin-plate surprise to her mother and we’ve leaked it like wheat from a mouse-hole sack.”

“She might have told me,” said Liza. “I don’t like surprises. Well, go on—what was she doing?”

“Who?”

“Why, Mrs. Trask of course.”

“Doing? Why, sitting, sitting in a chair under an oak tree. Her time’s not far.”

“Her hands, Samuel, her hands—what was she doing with her hands?”

Samuel searched his memory. “Nothing I guess. I remember—she had little hands and she held them clasped in her lap.”

Liza sniffed. “Not sewing, not mending, not knitting?”