‘Smooth pasture is a pretty sight in a country, rollen up and cows dotted here and yon over it, red shorthorns and white and dun.’

‘And you won’t say “I know a prettier country in Adair or in Shelby or Tennessee.” Mountains or not.’

‘Smooth pastures, we’ll have.’

‘Whatever I can do to pleasure you, Ellie. The house like the way you want.’

‘And the house fixed up, the shutters mended and the porch don’t leak. To sit on a Saturday when the work is done. A vine up over the chimney. Once I saw a far piece from here…’

‘The stumps all pulled and the roots grubbed out.’

‘A parlour to sit back in when the busy season is over.’

‘The stumps pulled and the roots grubbed out, the plough to slip easy through the field dirt. No root snags to tear your very guts outen you.’

‘A parlour to sit back in cool when the busy season is done. Stairs to go up and down maybe.’

‘A real tobacco patch, not some little acre bed. Some land to set your back to proper.’

‘And when you stand in the door of the house you could see the fields roll off, green, some of them, and some ploughed, and far off the knob hills with blue… Birds in the trees in the spring of the year. Springbirds and redbreasts…’

‘And in the winter drive the crop to town and sell for a fair price, prime good burley leaf, twelve cents a pound.’

One day in October, while Ellen sat on the stoop to shell the corn for the hens, Bell came along the road, returning from the store, her loosely-hung mouth working noisily over the taffy she had bought. There had been no one but the storekeeper at the store that day, she said, but the day before there had been others.

‘Well, there was several there yester,’ she answered, being idly asked. ‘There was J.B. Tarbell and Mr Lucas and Pius. Then there was Albert Wingate and a town man. J.B. Tarbell he didn’t buy e’er thing. Then Ambrose Mudd was there and I set a right smart while and listened. Tarbell he said he seen a sight today as he taken a shortcut through Wingate’s to the creek. He says that-there Kent ain’t right in his mind, he reckoned. Got his hogs away back half a mile from the house to fatten. Down in a gully, he said, hard to get to, and there he’s got a whole parcel of hogs fenced up in a pen. Everybody laughed. Said he’d taken trouble to make a pen, hewed right outen the scrub cedars, and all the time he’s got a good pen right up alongside the barn. Said Jasper Kent ain’t right in his head. Then Albert said which gully was it, and Ambrose said that reminds him he needs a few ten-penny nails and to give him a dime’s worthen. I set and listened a right smart while.’