My name it is Joe Bowers.

I have a brother Ike.

I came from old Missouri

And all the way from Pike.

I have a little gal there,

Her name is Sallie Black.

I asked her if she’d marry me,

She said it was a whack.

Says she to me, ‘Joe Bowers,

Before we lock for life,

You better get a little home

To keep your little wife.’

‘For God’s sake!’ Ellen thought, quoting Jasper’s own usual comment. She stirred the fire gaily and took Jasper’s kiss on her face. Then he began to tell his news, quieting now to his serious business. He had met Joe Phillips in town and Phillips had said that he intended to raise tobacco the next year and that he, Jasper Kent, could have the place cropping on shares. Then they asked Hen if he remembered Phillips’s farm and would he like to go back there to live, to the place where he was born, and Hen took a great advantage to himself, as if he had lent something to the house by being born in it, and Ellen cooked a feast of meat and bread and made an egg pie to be merry over while they talked of going back, herself yielded now to the happy event, so that the moment of Jasper’s entering full of cold and full of his unsung song now seemed very remote.

The house at Phillips’s place was vacant and they could take it at any time, and so they began at once to prepare for the journey. They had less goods than when they came, but two children more, Joe and Dick. Ellen rolled the clothing into bundles in a fever of joy because they were going. She would have a garden and some hens, and perhaps some turkeys, and the peddler would come to her house door to buy. There would be bright little dresses for Nannie and Dick, and Hen would go to school, perhaps, wearing a little duck suit from the store, and as she saw in her mind’s eye his stout little body under the duck suit she melted to him afresh and trembled with pride and maternal feeling. The cherry tree would be bearing by this time and she was in a fidget to know what had come to the grapevines she had planted along the fence. Marthy Shuck would come with her youngones, glad she had come back, and as she gathered together the clothing it came to her, mingled with the pleasure of the return, that she would be planting the garden in six weeks, perhaps, with Joe Phillips in and out to give her seeds and plants and to show her ways and praise her skill. ‘I got to get my youngones packed and off,’ Jasper said. ‘Five youngones I got, all told, Hen the oldest, and then Nan, she’s next, then Joe, then Ellie and then Dick, the least one. Five brats, I got. A house plumb full.’ Ellen felt her eyes brighten as she leaned over the cooking pots to gather them together.