The farms about were poor and rough, the land selling for small sums by the acre. Jasper had thought that in a year or two he might begin to buy the place he now farmed.

The people met at the store or at the smith-shop in the hamlet or at the church a few miles away. Many of their men were outspoken in anger and many of them carried weapons, even to the church. On preaching days the great voice of the preacher rolled over their scuffling feet as they came and went during the service, as he admonished their hates and their too-ready angers. The men stood together to oppose some marketing measure which had been initiated outside their neighbourhood, resenting it. ‘It’s a poor country,’ Ellen said. ‘That I see. Hard, it is. But some of the folks are right nice. Mrs Shepherd to send us milk when little Melissy was sick. And Mrs Scruggs so glad to get the flower seeds Nan had to swap her for another kind. But a hard country, no matter.’ ‘But I could buy this farm cheap, and easy terms,’ Jasper said. The cold spring had begun, winter lingering. Jasper and Hen had burned their plant bed to prepare for the sowing of the seeds, and Nannie and Dick cut greens from the pasture. One day as they worked together in the barn Hen told Ellen of a mishap at the shop the day before. Jasper had had words with Lobe Baker. Lobe had stopped his wagon before Jasper’s team and when Jasper had asked Lobe to draw aside he had been given a curt reply and an oath. He would drive off when he pleased, Lobe had said, and not sooner, sitting swaggering on his lead horse.

‘He and Pap had words,’ Hen said.

‘Pap, he’s not afeared of Lobe Baker,’ Ellen said after a little.

‘Then Lobe, he made Pap wait a right smart while and all the rest stood around to see if there’d be a fight, but Pap sat still on his seat. I see he was out-done and ready to fight, he was that mad. But Pap didn’t want e’er fight, not that day nohow. Seems as if Pap had it in head he wouldn’t fight that-there time. He just sat still and waited till Lobe Baker drove off, a right long while it was too.’

Ellen mended the coops, with Hen to help, preparing for the summer broods when they should come. She would grow many chickens, she decided, to have something for Nan to trade at the store, for Nan would be wanting a fresh new dress or more with the summer. Perhaps she would make a little parlour for Nan in the room beyond the chimney, or so she thought, a place where her children’s young friends could come for their play-parties, and she thought of what she would do to freshen the room and make it fair, the roof mended and the window panes set in the sashes and the walls newly whitewashed some good bright day in late spring. Nannie and Joe would do the work gladly, and later she would buy some chairs and then carpeting when she could. She told Nannie of her plan one day when the spring was still cold and wet, bleak with the over-late winter, and Nannie and Joe worked over the coops and cleaned the pens eagerly, hurrying the spring.