It was a quiet country, for there was no bell to ring to tell the time of day. The man’s brother came, brought by a child who had been sent to fetch him, and the woman who stood beside the table poured Ellen a cup of sweet milk, fresh and good. The child was beautiful with dark hair and a soft clinging dress of dark cotton cloth. Her hair lay against the sides of her head in free waves that drifted softly when she moved and was gathered into a little braid below. Her brown legs moved quickly and her feet touched the floor with little taps of sound, her movements free and undesigned, unpredicted. She stood beside the door or she ran softly toward the window, toward the table, toward one of the women, or she fingered a cup or a spoon or knelt on a chair, moment by moment. Her smile was very open and sweet. Then they went, all, into the outer room and stood about the walls. Ellen’s eyes followed the child as she slipped in unpremeditated motions from place to place or stood in unfixed quiet. The room became very still as Ellen and Jasper stood beside the man, the brother who had been brought; or the man faced them, and joining their hands, said ceremonial words. His face was thin and set with ceremony, his hands moving rigidly over the words or settling down in hard firm finality over the said word, fixed and done. Fixed forever, pronounced, finished, said and unrevoked, his words flowed through the great hardness of his voice, a groundwork on which to lean, a foundation beneath a foundation, the framework of the house set and fixed in timbers and pinned together with fine strong wedges of trimmed hard wood. His voice trembled a little with its own fixity and hardness, but it erected a strong tower. In the end he made a prayer for herself and Jasper, and he gave her a paper on which their names were written. The women shook her hand, and then the men came, their handshakes reserved and ceremonious. The child stood beside the wall, her gaze light and aloof, or she tapped her shoulder softly against the door or touched the latch, her look free and her way unhampered, and the beauty of her look came about Ellen as she gave her hand to the men.

Jasper talked with one of the women apart and later with one of the men, and he gave them money from that which he had. Ellen was sitting on one of the chairs beside the wall with the other women sitting near, while the voices of the men came through the open door. The women talked, but Ellen heard the up and down of their voices but faintly and forgot their sayings when they were said. The child walked nearer, fingering the wall with little nut-stained fingers, or she sat gravely on the chair beside the door, or she walked near to Ellen’s chair, but Ellen’s hands lay still in her lap. The child’s little dress hung softly about her knees, its small sleeves a tender jest, a loving pretence, sleeves turned in their littleness to something precious and fine. Then Ellen asked her name and one of the women said that it was Melindy and that she was six years old. The sun flooded in at the window, having left the door, and after a little one of the women brought Ellen a hat which she put on over the coils of her hair, and another brought her cloak which she put on, Jasper standing beside her. There was a vehicle before the gate. Then Jasper wrote a letter to Henry and Nellie, and when he had sealed it, he climbed with Ellen into the rear seat of the wagon, one of the men sitting in the front to drive. One of the women had given them a package of sugar bread and this was set under the front seat, and they drove away.