The farm was beautiful and secure, running up over a hill and lapping into a ravine, spreading flat over the lower pasture. It was there, in place, reaching about into hollows and over uplands, theirs to live in and to know and to work. The locust tree beside the woodpile and the tall bushes along the creek, as they always were. She was there, there yet, her body walking up through the pasture with a tin bucket swinging and making a high thin brushing noise as it touched her moving skirt. The farm was secure and the land was placed, all beautiful and near. She began to gather the hot blackberries from the briars of the wasted hill pasture. A few berries made a low tinkling as they fell into her pail, and then the brown colt came from the other side of the enclosure, nibbling offhandishly at the wilted grass and edging always a little nearer. She left her berrying and they played a short while together, she pitting her arms against his neck and pushing hard. He let her throw one leg over his back and ride a little way, or she would pull his long forelock and twist his mane, or feed him choice bits of grass which she gathered from under the briars. While she held out a tuft of clover to the colt’s quivering out-reaching muzzle, the hillside was clear to see and to have, hers, and who cares if there was an end. Let it look out for itself. The colt’s lips came down upon the white clover blossoms which went into the long cavern of his mouth, turning as they went. The large straw hat which her father had bought for her would catch in the light breeze and flash off over the briars to hang on a cluster of twigs or glide off over the waste stone grass. Just as she recovered the hat from under a rose briar and gathered a last mouthful for the colt a sharp voice cut through the heat, coming from the path that lay through the high bushes. It was the voice of the farmer’s wife.

‘What you want in here?’

Ellen was too much frightened to run away. She stood staring at Mrs Bodine, holding her hat in her hand, and her hands being engaged, the one with the hat and the other with the pail, a feeling of utter defencelessness overcame her. The question was repeated several times before she spoke.

‘Mr Bodine told Pappy,’ she trembled.

‘Nobody said you could have them berries. I need every one for myself.’

‘Mr Bodine told Pappy we could…’

Ellen felt herself to be hanging in the air, cut off from the ground, while she waited in the long stillness that followed. The farmer’s wife wore a crisp dress, the waist and skirt alike, both blue, both starched, both washed at the same time. Ellen’s skirt was blue and her waist was greenish-drab, faded and limp and old. Washings no longer made them new. A fear of dogs and men came into her terror, and she felt as if her shoulders were tied to a post or a tree, lifted high. The farmer’s wife was a sharp crisp shape, standing tall out of the blackberry brushes. It pushed against her body and filled her mouth with a bitter taste. Little prickling needles stuck in and out of the skin of her face.