Aunt Betts and Uncle Louie had such a good time eating that they kept Lena and Marcia in giggles all the time. Aunt Betts liked to sit by the stove, eating out of the pots with a big pewter spoon. Uncle Louie used a knife exclusively with fascinating dexterity. Each time he finished a plateful he’d shout “Betts, by God! More, by God!” Often for supper, which was around five o’clock, they had mugs of hard cider or homemade wine brewed from elderberries or dandelions. They would talk about things they remembered and roar with laughter till tears would stream down Aunt Betts’s rosy round face. They told the same things over and over with never-failing enjoyment. There was the time the English Quaker family came all the way from England to the Quaker settlement down by the covered bridge. They had slept on the bare parlor floor on hay, with the old grandfather waking them up all hours of the night shouting, “Liverpool! Don’t miss the boat!”

“Liverpool! Don’t miss the boat!” gasped Aunt Betts, holding her sides, her plump bosom quivering with mirth. “Liverpool—oh, my! Oh, my sakes, Louie, stop it or I’ll die laughing!”

Uncle Louie would throw back his head and cackle till the dog would run up from the barn to peer in the kitchen door, panting with sympathetic delight. The children would stand gaping, uncertain of the joke but highly pleased.

The pie races were the most fun. Aunt Betts would cut great wedges of pie for Almedy and the children. Then she would set three pies in hot pie tins down on the table, their berry juice still bubbling up through the flaky white crusts. Aunt Betts and Uncle Louie, each with a knife in hand and shaking with suppressed glee, would eye each other steadily for a moment, then cry out together, “Go!” Then their knives laid into the nearest pie, scooping it into their mouths, seeing who would get to the middle pie first. Uncle Louie always won because Aunt Betts got out of breath from laughing and had to unloose her belt, even her collar. One night they finished the cider barrel between them, drinking from the bung, and they must have had a race on the pantry too, for the fried squirrels and corn pudding were all gone by morning.

Almedy went up to her room at dark when the children did, but Uncle Louie and Aunt Betts could often be heard shouting with laughter in the kitchen till late at night.

The children’s bedroom had sloping ceilings so that a grown person could stand erect only in the middle of the room. The window was very small, covered with mosquito netting which glistened like a spiderweb when the moonlight came through it. In the enormous black walnut bed the two girls lay awake listening to the country night noises that seemed to have smells as well somehow woven into them, a hot melting honeysuckle fragrance or the smell of rain on cedars, of wet maple leaves and dew on lilacs all mingled with the musty mothball aroma of their featherbed. A million crickets ticked out the darkness, a barn owl hooted, a loon laughed, frogs croaked down by the spring, sleeping birds gave tiny clucks, sometimes a horse let out a lonesome whinny.