She took the roll of bills from his hand and felt the coins wrapped inside it. Then she saw him move swiftly across the row, moving toward the end of the field with swift strokes of the hoe, three or four blows to each plant and it was finished. She went slowly away, startled and unprepared, hearing the withdrawing thud of the hoe as she went. Then she sat on the stile beside the garden patch under a thin ash tree and shelled the peas for the dinner. She began to think of Susie Whelen and of how her mouth was full and wide and her eyes soft and blue, her dark hair in a roll over her forehead. If Jasper or if Tarbell should look at Susie Whelen it would be seen that she was pretty and they would want her in their arms, all the more if they should look at her mouth when she smiled. She was soft and warm and full of laughter, or sullen and short, easy with her curses. To look at her was to see how full she was with her woman-ness, and Tarbell would surely see. Beyond the fields rose the wall of the quarry and above this the crest of the high pasture ran in a rugged line against the sky, all faint now in the heat of the mid-morning. It would have taken her two days to finish the field, she reflected, but now it would be done that day. He had smiled when he had said ‘some easy work’ and his eyes had been on her face and on her eyes. She thought that she might get another ribbon or a fan on a long chain of beads, and she could feel the fan softly opening in her hand. Perhaps Jasper would take it into his hand or touch it against his face as he talked, but Susie Whelen came as a menace to the edge of her vision of the fan against Jasper’s face, or Tarbell’s, her mouth breaking easily into a smile, careless of its smile or of its oath. Her curses broke on her smooth lips and her bright large teeth, and one could kiss her damp mouth with a deep kiss, pushing in on her lips, eating her oath back to its core and living on its life, knowing her soft bosom and her shoulders.

Now she dropped the peas into the basket and felt Jasper’s money in the pocket of her skirt, lying against her thigh, and she remembered his words. She would hate Susie Whelen and she would watch her and she would not trust her warm body and the warm breath of her laugh. After the sugar and coffee were bought she would have something for herself, and she reckoned the price of eggs against the number in the basket under Nellie’s bed to test out the sum. The hens had fallen away from their laying with the mid-season and eggs were hard to find. The huckster refused any that were thin-shelled and old and often laid aside half she carried out to him. She remembered the huckster’s drooping eyes and his serious mouth drawn in a little when he counted the eggs, his ways all intent upon his business. ‘Twelve cents,’ he would say, driving a hard bargain with Nellie, ‘I say twelve. If I let you women run my business I’ll land in the poor farm.’ But for her his way was gentler, giving little kindnesses, reckoning the sum in her favour and giving her the odd unreckoned cents if she bought a ribbon or a pin, and he would let her try all the pins to see which looked best on her bosom. All this for her because she was young and because she had clear straight eyes, but he listened less to Regina because her looks were slow and her step plodding, her skin sewed crookedly onto her cheeks. But he laughed with Susie Whelen and let her have her time to choose a pin or a lace, easy and happy with her, walking briskly about the wagon, because she made him feel young himself.