The days were hazy with smoke-filled air and the mornings cold with frost. Jasper worked at the barns where the tobacco was housed or he ploughed the land for rye and wheat, and when the food was cooked Ellen would stand in the door of the house to watch for him until he would gather into the path and come nearer, at first a spot moving in the path, a moving shape, a coming voice, and her beauty would grow with his coming until it would meet him full-blown as he stepped through the door; or two women would come to sit a short while through the afternoon, Hester and Marthy Shuck. Their talk would fall idly across the cool hours of the December days, purposeless but gathering weight and intent as it filled the time until Jasper came and as it filled the space about her with an idle neighbourly kindness, and she thought often in the intervals of their talk, hearing some unfamiliar name spoken, that she would name her child Melissy. She made a little dress for it in the secret and quiet hours of the mid-morning, hiding the dress away in the trunk when she heard the women coming on the path. The farmer paid Jasper his wages every Saturday and with the money they bought their supplies at the store at the road crossing, two miles away, down the path to the barns and then out onto the highroad. They would walk there in the dusk and whisper at the counter over the spending of a coin; was there lard? was there soap in plenty? was there oil? or she would ask for a bit of flannel, two yards perhaps, or a bit of white print, whispering her want to the merchant, ‘A little something I needed,’ she would say to Jasper, ‘A small something I wanted for myself.’ But he knew at last why she bought these small bits of cloth and gave her five dollars into her hand, knew as they leaned together at the counter, and gave her five of the dollars although there was little left. They carried the packages home through the raw air of the early evening and cooked themselves a generous supper to reward their happiness.

Sometimes Bill Shuck and Marthy, his wife, would come to sit through the evening, Marthy a little sly, leading one to tell more than one had meant by undervaluing her own and bidding for sympathy. When they came the little house would seem about to split apart with their songs, Jasper’s great voice playing over Bill’s in a tussle of singing, a wrestle of rough-handled words and great thundering embellishments that grappled down in the bass notes and went scuffling off into their rumbling trebles, or Ellen and Marthy would sing and their song would come like a small plaintive crying after that of the men. The farmer said that he did not intend to build another room to the house; lumber was too high and work too dear; they could make out with what they had and if they did not like it they could go where they could do better. He cried out this decision in the stripping room one day where Jasper worked with the other men.