‘What’s that you say to me?’

‘No brat of Joe Phillips can be borned in my house.’

‘Who’s thought to be born a brat of Joe Phillips in your house?’

‘You ask it!’

‘You got little call to talk to me, you!’

‘I say what I mean, now. Not in my house.’

After that they did not speak for many days. Jasper called upon Nannie for his wants and spent but little time about the cabin. Sometimes he would take the boys to fish. Ellen sickened often and lay on her bed, scarcely knowing that she breathed. The entire bitterness and hate of the summer gathered into each moment and into each brief interchange with Jasper. After many days in which he had not spoken to her, he turned upon her one evening as they passed in the yard.

‘Joe Phillips, why don’t he support you? Cheap, he is. Has he made his plans to bring up his brat?’

The cold of the autumn found the children unprepared, their garments thin and ragged. Ellen would rouse herself from her bed to guide Hen or Nannie in preparing the food and lie stiffly down again. She would answer dully if Marthy Shuck came, giving her ready-made replies. Jasper left money on the shelf as he always had, but he spoke but little and she never addressed him.

‘I was a cock-eyed fool,’ he said. ‘Not sense enough to see my hand afore my eyes.’

‘You think you see a far piece now, don’t you?’

‘Right afore my eyes, and me not sense enough.’

‘I reckon you got your good eyesight from Hester Shuck. Her eyes are good, God knows.’

Each tried to hurt the other more, thrust after thrust, and they haggled over the unborn.

‘I don’t aim to stay on Joe Philip’s place e’er other year,’ Jasper said one night to Hen and Joe. ‘I’ll be off against spring comes.’

The cold of January bit through the thin boards of the house and made frost on the windows and latches. Ellen never went to the woodpile now. She trusted Hen and Nannie to bring the wood Jasper had cut. ‘February, and I’ll be gone from here,’ Jasper said over and over, speaking always to Nannie or Hen. Ellen lay on her bed almost continually, scarcely knowing that she continued in life.

‘I reckon you think you’ll run off,’ she spoke once out of a long silence. ‘I reckon you think you’ll run. I see you a-goen! You’ll not run off, Jasper Kent. I know you too well. You’ll not run off from your youngones. You’re tied down with a whole bale of rope.’

There were cold days when Jasper stayed in the cabin to cook the food. Once when the children were in the kitchen at the table he came to the sleeping room for some coat and said tauntingly to her, ‘I reckon Joe Phillips he fetches down fine victuals when I’m gone to work. I see you got no appetite now.’