They talked as they worked.

“Sister’s about driving me up the wall with her mooning around. Everything’s a production of sighs and sheep’s eyes. Sits gazing off daydreaming and then hissy-fits I ask her to help with something. Then, just like that, she’s mean as an empty purse. The other day, yesterday it was, she turned on me all the sudden. We were washing up after supper and I said something bout how fun it’d be down to the fair today, all the boys she’d see there, something like that, and she brought a hand up all wet with suds and thumped me right here”—touching the end of the fork handle to her breastbone—“and said, I ever say anything about getting married, ever, you whack me over the head with a stick.’ Irked me, I tell you. I wanted to say, It bothers you so bad stay home and make hay.” Her face frustrated and amused, wet with sweat, stubbled with stuck chaff. She moved with the rocking track of the wagon as on a rough slow sea.

Norman, walking and lifting the forkloads over his head now, had less wind. “She got her heart broke. That’s not easy, ever.”

“Huh! I told her.”

“Well girl. Told’s one thing, knowing’s another. One fine day you’ll learn that firsthand I’d bet.” Sweat burned his eyes each forkful lifted up.

“Me? I’d know better. All last winter I told her. I said, Have your fun but don’t be making plans out of it. That Dan Martin’s eyes wander too fast too far. Horizon he sees don’t begin to rest on these piddly hills. Shoot, I told her, it don’t even start there. She said, Yes, Daniel has ambition. I said, Ambition’s not the start of it. He dreams on things you and I can’t hardly imagine. You know her, placid little spitfire turned on me and said, Don’t be telling me what I can’t dream of too. So I shrugged that off. And besides that, what I didn’t tell her was her lovely old Dan didn’t mind wasting his time running his eyes on me. Think about that. But I tried. Tried to tell her.”

“She’s learned it I’d speculate.”

“Not any too fast, seems to me.”

Norman walked along, forking up a bit. They came to a windrow end and paused while the team rounded the headland and then started down the field again. In the bright afternoon light the windrows seemed rich rolled bundles of summer standing against the shorn pale stubble. Dark and fragrant, each with its own small shadow running alongside. Norman began to fork up again. The load was growing, the lift greater. He said, “Don’t make too small of it. Love’s a wondrous thing. Most honest people, it’s almost all keeps them going. Otherwise you get pale imitation, some business scheme, some meanness to other folks, maybe bypassing it all and handing it up to Jesus. All that’s good I guess, I mean maybe not good but necessary. But you love someone, find someone loves you back, that can’t be beat. Now it happens, happens often too, one loves more than the other. Maybe all the time it’s like that. Just depends on how great the gap is. Your sister—well, she found too big a gap. Like I said, that happens all the time. Mostly, all it does is teach us better what to look for.”