‘I don’t know why I laugh,’ she said. ‘I want to laugh all the time, maybe. I got to go now to get supper ready. Here’s Hen in the pasture now with the things I sent for at the store. I got to call Nannie to get the little chickens in and to see after the geese. I got a heap to do afore dark. Laugh I do. I reckon I haven’t cried for three year, no not for three, and I don’t aim to cry. A body that waits for me to cry will wait a long spell. A grindstone with a treadle to go by your foot-power is what ought to be. Maybe I’ve seen one in my time somewheres and that’s how it comes to mind now, and I can’t tell whe’r I made it up myself or not.’

Jasper was going away across the pasture and she would not see him until the next day sometime or the day after. He had looked back from the gate just as she had laughed about the grindstone. Her thought followed Phillips home after he had gone and clung about him when she heard him calling his hogs at the barn. Later she saw his lantern light going about the stables. The children were hungry, clamouring endlessly, and Dick cried for Jasper when he had finished eating; his crying put a weariness upon the house as if the whimperings came out of the boards and out of the floor. She remembered Phillips and saw his firm hand turning the blade on the stone. Hen and Joe quarrelled and fought and Dick broke into tears over one thing and another. Nannie wandered a little way into the yard but returned to sit beside Ellen at the doorsill. ‘What’s the matter with tonight?’ she said once. ‘What’s so bad about the air? It pushes down on my breath.’