Then she fixed her hair in soft coils and wore her bright cotton dress all day, at work or for rest. She walked up to the field where the men were at work in the wheat harvest, taking Nannie and Dick, showing them the falling bundles and the clicking knives. She took off her bonnet and let the sun fall on her hair, and she knew that the coils shone brightly in the sunlight and that her dress was a bright spot moving over the dull green of the field and that her step was proud as she went through the stubble. The men, all but Jasper, looked at her, saying pleasant things, and Joe Phillips offered her a cup of the fresh cold water he had just brought to the field in a large bucket. Then all the men came for water and she dipped the cups for them while they eagerly crowded about her, making pleasant jokes, but Jasper drank his draught and was away without pleasantry. When she came back from the field, leading Dick through the pasture and talking with Nannie, she knew that Joe Phillips had seen the sheen on her hair and had seen the strong lift of her bosom as she had walked through the cut grain, and had felt the vigour of her being. There was a pleasure to her in this in spite of the woodenness that gathered back into her body as she came down from the field, while she wondered why she had gone there and why she cared, even for one moment, to seem lovely before Jasper. He might play with his company along the river any night; she would never care again, she reflected, but her reflection became a determination and died of its own force, leaving a chaos which lasted until her pleasure in her own loveliness as reflected in Phillips arose again.

Hen and Joe were waiting at the yard gate, expecting her, for they had climbed to the gate to peer out over the pasture. They had missed her and had found the yard unbearable without her there, unwilling to play until she was found again, and a great joy surged through her. There were stains of tears on Joe’s face; he had lost her with bitterness and fear, and she stopped at the gate a moment with all her children standing close about her feet. But passing through the yard her mind turned toward the crab thicket with a great hate and she sickened with hate as she neared the milk house and grew dizzy with pain and evilwishing as she passed over the door sill.

Phillips was grinding a tool at the stone when she came from the garden one mid-afternoon, the wheat being cut now and the labour slack. She had pinned Nannie’s blue metal brooch on her breast and her hair was well coiled on her head. She set her basket in the shade beside the door of the house and carried the squashes to the milk house to keep them fresh. Jasper was coming across the pasture with a sack of meal across the plough horse he was riding. She walked past the grindstone and spoke to Phillips as she tarried under the locust tree.