‘Here’s how Granny looks,’ Melissy said, sucking in her lips to look toothless. ‘Here’s Granny.’

‘Shame to you,’ Ellen said. ‘I’ll whip you and whip hard if I hear you make fun of your granny. Don’t let me hear e’er one of you make fun of your granny or your grandpap either. Granny, she’s old. It’s a shame to make fun of old folks. You’ll be old yourself some day.’

‘I won’t be old,’ Melissy said. ‘I don’t aim to let it come, not that-there. I’ll grow up but that’s all I aim.’

An old man lived down the road beyond the schoolhouse, living with some woman, his niece or granddaughter who was always seen plodding through the work or sitting barefoot in the doorway. The old man walked with a bent spine, throwing out his twisted legs, carrying a basket and searching the herbs of the roadside for something. The schoolboys called him Old Live-forever. They would shout to him as they passed him on the road or as he searched the grass. ‘Hi, there, Old Live-forever!’ And then, out of his high thin voice, bursting from his crumpled old throat, ‘God almighty!’ Searching the roadside for some greens or something to eat. The boys: ‘Hello, Old Live-forever!’ and the reply, ‘A little piece of greens for my dinner, a little mess.’ Sometimes he would laugh with the boys and call out, ‘Good day, young men!’ waving his twisted hand spirally under his shoulder. ‘Oh, God knows! A little piece of greens for my pot.’ Ellen often saw old Sansbury as she passed along the road going to the store down beyond the creek. One day she saw him eating a piece of something he had picked up from the road, a bit of some child’s school lunch thrown away.

‘Nor old Sansbury,’ Ellen said. ‘Don’t ever let me hear a one of you youngones call out to old Mr Sansbury and call him names. No matter if he can’t hear.’

‘I don’t aim to get old,’ Melissy said. ‘I’ll grow up but that’s all I aim to do. Wrinkledy face! Crooked back! You reckon I’d be like that? Grow up is all I aim.’

Nannie was pretty now, thirteen years old. She watched how the other girls had their dresses made and was eager for a bit of ribbon or a lace or a scallop or a ruffle. A woman, she was, come early to her flowering, like the women of Jasper’s people. In the heat of the summer she would put her hair in a little twist on the top of her head and bits of it would fall in tiny curls over her forehead. She would bring a girl home with her named Cordie Peters and they would gather the berries from the pasture briars and make them into a conserve, or they would wash their hands afterward in sour milk to whiten their fingers. A boy from a neighbouring farm, Lige Newton, would sometimes come on an errand or pass over the hill going to the creek to seine, and he would stop to talk to Hen or to them where they rested under the poplar tree, and after he was gone they would tell over all that he had said, laughing and calling his name, pursuing his words with repetitions and laughter and contriving sayings that would bring back his name to their talk. With Dick and Joe, Nannie went away to the school in the early morning, during late summer and autumn when the school kept, trudging off through the dust of the wagon track to the dustier road and then out of sight beyond the turn, or they came home late in the day, having stopped at the wild crab tree, soiled and tired, often carrying their dusty shoes in their hands.