‘But it’s over now,’ Ellen murmured, ‘over and near forgotten, I reckon. Over, it is.’

The house had three rooms now, one standing forward on the side toward the farm. There were two outside doors, one looking toward the farm and the other toward the woods and the hill fields. The locust tree in the yard, down toward the fence, had a seat built beneath it, and a little way to the right beyond the farm-side door stood the dugout with rock steps going down, and beyond the path went on to the garden. The huckster would come through the pasture on the two-wheel ruts along the fence and turn about at Ellen’s gate, ready to trade. Hen, going to school, walking the mile he must go, carried about himself a new wonder, a hint and a sign of things unknown or long forgotten, for out of his mouth would come sayings she once had known. She would sometimes look from one child to another, searching them, bewildered. Nannie had a little pointed nose, like Nellie’s. Her hair grew in soft waves over her ears, pale brown hair, soft and thin, and hung in a little braid at the back, tied with a tiny ribbon. Jasper said she looked like his mother, and between her and Jasper there was some close unspoken understanding. They would sometimes whisper together. Joe was a swaggerer, always ready for a fight, but Hen was careful and old, his slightly staring eyes looking distrustfully upon the world. Ellen felt awed of him when he wore his new learning openly and gathered a new pride to herself from him.

After a while Jasper would own a place; they talked of it with a vague certainty. Jasper had a great joke to tell on Hen. Coming home from the creek where they had fished all afternoon, Jasper, Nannie and Hen, suddenly Hen had stopped in the path to look up into the trees, listening, and then he shouted:

‘Mammy cooks for us-all.’

Jasper told his joke over and over, roaring out his great laugh, and Hen joined him. He had heard the owl himself, Jasper said, up in the woods: ‘Whoo, whoo – who-who-who-aw-y,’ but Hen had heard, ‘Who – cooks – for you – all? for you – all?’

Nannie was past five now, able to hold her own fish pole and to put on her own bait. Her little brown feet made small prints in the dust of the road as she ran along behind Jasper and Hen. Or all together they would come home through the dusk singing, Nannie’s high shout unblended with the rest,

Ring around the raccoon’s tail,

Possum’s tail is bar,

Rabbit got no tail at-all

But a little bunch of har.

Sometimes, hearing them come singing or talking toward the cabin, seeing them come down the fenceline through the field from the creek, all talking together of things they knew and shared, her heart would seem to stand in its measure and a question, ‘Oh, who are they?’ would arise in her mind, pushing at her throat to be said.