They quickly took to themselves the changes that had been made in the house while they were gone. Someone had built a bench under the locust tree, and a row of shelves had been fitted to the wall beyond the cookstove. A dugout had been made for a cellar; it stood on the north side of the house in the shade, stone steps, roughly set, going down inside. It would keep the milk cool and sweet in summer. Hen remembered the rooms and he told Nannie stories of how she used to run away to the pasture and how he would bring her back, but she shook her head and could not remember, wanting Hen to tell her just how she had looked then and what she had said, or she would turn to Ellen asking, ‘Did I, Mammy?’ And once, as Hen said, she had lost her hippens over in the field, ‘stepped clean plumb outen her hippens and walked off.’

‘I reckon you want to know how you looked then,’ Hen said. ‘Right out in the plumb middle of the field.’

But Nannie was angry and said she did not do anything of the kind, and at that Hen remembered other more embarrassing things to tell. Nannie fought and cried in turns.

‘I could remember things about Hen,’ Ellen said, ‘that would match anything he knows on Nannie. Hen, he’s done all the things Nannie she ever thought to do and more maybe. Poor Hen, he was the first and he had to make his own way. If Hen lost his hippens in the pasture why he didn’t have no kind brother to pick it up for him and fetch it along home. I recall one time Hen lost his’n alongside the wheat field and the men at work in the field they picked it up and hung it on a pole against the fence, like it was a flag, it was. And it hung there a right smart while till I happened to see it and fetched it home.’

When the cherry tree bloomed it was like a little plaything, shapely and white-feathered as it was seen against the rise of the pasture. The farmer gave Nannie a pig to raise. ‘You could buy yourself a fine present Christmas if you slop your hog proper,’ he said. He built another small room to the cabin toward the spring season, and there were henhouses. The milk house kept the cream sweet and cool and presently there were coins to jingle in Ellen’s pocket, for the peddler, knowing she was there, came that way. She would save the egg money to buy a sewing machine, but the money from the butter she spent at once.

Marthy Shuck was the same she had been before, a little sly, a little round-about in her talk, but she was sure to come for a visit now and then and Ellen liked her. Sometimes she would bring one of her children to play with Dick or Joe.