Joe Phillips had brought her twenty or thirty raspberry cuttings from his garden, and in midsummer he had brought her sweet potato plants and had helped her to set them in rows. His own garden was a marvel of neatness and economy, and she tried to make hers the same.

She dug in the garden during the growing season until dusk drove her to the house. Spring found her out with the first open days, spading for the onions. Later she cut sticks for the peas or she called Hen to drop the seeds when she had made the rows. Sun-stained and hearty, her body deep and broad, she tried to give each one the veget able he liked best in ample profusion. Joe liked peas best; she would sow a plenty of peas, five rows. But Jasper was partial to beets, and she planted long rows of these, buying the finest seeds the peddler had.

Or hoeing out the weeds after the rains she would smile to think of what Hen had said about a bird: ‘And the jaybirds have got longer tails ’n common this year. I took notice to that early in spring.’

Phillips would come to work at the grindstone that stood under the locust tree, grinding his tool for an hour or more, or he would get Ellen to sew the torn pocket of his coat, offering to pay her but she would take nothing; he had given them much. ‘Mrs Phillips, she won’t do e’er thing for Phillips,’ Jasper had said once long ago. Sometimes he would talk of Lester, one of his boys. ‘If only he wouldn’t lie to me, his pappy,’ he said. ‘Tells me he wants money to set up in business, and he’s got no business. Boy nineteen. A-goen to the dogs fast.’

He was a lonesome man. Sometimes he would come every day to linger about Ellen’s yard, to watch her hands busy with the corn for the hens, busy with a garment she was sewing, busy with curds or cream. He would ask her advice.

‘What would you think of me to buy the Neal place?’ he asked. ‘Eighty-six acres, good corn land, fair at any rate, and for sale cheap. Would you think it too much for a man to take on?’

‘It would be a heap of work, two places not touchen each other, to come and go.’

‘I’d have to get another tenant for over there. Maybe it wouldn’t be a right good piece of business, like you say.’

‘A heap of corners to watch,’ she said. ‘Your hands already full. But I’m no trafficker to set up to know a heap.’

Ellen had saved eighteen dollars toward her sewing machine, which was a very good sum, for she could buy one for twenty-seven or thirty dollars. Already the agent had come to her door, and he had said that he would come again in the summer. When the cherries ripened that year she sent a pail of them to Nellie along with a dozen early cabbage plants from her garden, proud she was to be able again to dispense gifts. It was late spring now, and Marthy Shuck came often, watching, curious, unable to find a way to say what was in her mind. Hester Shuck had ceased to come altogether, but now and then Ellen would meet her on the road.