Sandy, looking at the back of the letter that his mother held, stood at the kitchen-table rapidly devouring a large piece of fresh lemon pie, which she had brought from Mrs. J. J. Rice’s. Annjee had said to save the two cold fried lamb chops until tomorrow, or Sandy would have eaten those, too.

“Wish you’d brought home some more pie,” the boy declared, his lips white with meringue, but Annjee, who had just got in from work, paid no attention to her son’s appreciative remarks on her cookery.

Instead she said: “Ma certainly ain’t got no time for Jimboy, has she?” and then sat down with the open letter still in her hand—a single sheet of white paper pencilled in large awkward letters. She put it on the table, rested her dark face in her hands, and began to read it again.... She knew how it was, of course, that her husband hadn’t written before. That was all right now. Working all day in the hot sun with a gang of Greeks, a man was tired at night, besides living in a box-car, where there was no place to write a letter anyway. He was a great big kid, that’s what Jimboy was, cut out for playing. But when he did work, he tried to outdo everybody else. Annjee could see him in her mind, tall and well-built, his legs apart, muscles bulging as he swung the big hammer above his head, driving steel. No wonder he hurt his back, trying to lay more ties a day than anybody else on the railroad. That was just like Jimboy. But she was kind of pleased he had hurt it, since it would bring him home.

“Ain’t you glad he’s comin’, Sandy?”

“Sure,” answered the child, swallowing his last mouthful of pie. “I hope he brings me that gun he promised to buy last Easter.” The boy wiped his sticky hands on the dish-cloth and ran out into the back yard, calling: “Willie-Mae! Willie-Mae!”

“Stay right over yonder!” answered his grandmother through the dusk. “Willie-Mae’s in de bed, sir, an’ we old folks settin’ out here tryin’ to have a little peace.’ From the tone of Hager’s voice he knew he wasn’t wanted in the Johnsons’ yard, so he went back into the house, looked at his mother reading her letter again, and then lay down on the kitchen-floor.

“Affectionately as ever and allways till the judgment day,” she read, “Jimboy Rogers.”

He loved her, Annjee was sure of that, and it wasn’t another woman that made him go away so often. Eight years they’d been married. No, nine—because Sandy was nine, and he was ready to be born when they had had the wedding. And Jimboy left the week after they were married, to go to Omaha, where he worked all winter. When he came back, Sandy was in the world, sitting up sucking meat skins. It was springtime and they bought a piano for the house—but later the instalment man came and took it back to the store. All that summer her husband stayed home and worked a little, but mostly he fished, played pool, taught Harriett to buck-dance, and quarrelled with Aunt Hager. Then in the winter he went to Jefferson City and got a job at the Capitol.