The voices fell away and Ellen sank lower into sleep, her thought running back into the day, into the tobacco field, up the fencerow and under the locust tree, across the field in quickly stolen looks. ‘He likes me even if I wear an o’nary kind of old dress and my old hat that’s all I’ve got,’ thought spread itself wide with words. ‘He might maybe be somebody I’d know all my life. The next time he might talk about cities with doors set in close by doors and people walken quick in streets. Or he might tell about some of the wonders of the world.’

She would remember his shining eyes all day, and the accompaniment of the memory spread a gentleness over the ugly doorway, over the ladder, over the rough floors. She often felt the smile come to her mouth, always when she remembered any of his phrases. She felt it while she carried the water or while she hoed in the garden, and it came back to her from under the clods. The tobacco field was planted now and the rainy season was over. She had planted beans in the garden and she hoed the patch of corn again and again when her father told her she must. It was toward evening when she went to the ravine for the firewood. One day in June Joe Trent came there again, passing up from the farmhouse with a sharpened scythe in his hand. He stood before her, looking at her, looking at her dark dress and at her stockings and shoes.

‘And so you say this is your axe,’ he said.

‘Yes sir, it’s mine. Pappy made it for me.’

‘And so your pappy made the axe.’ He rubbed his hand over the smooth steel. ‘He’s a wonder, your pap. What out of?’

‘He never made the blade. He made the handle outen hickory and wedged it in.’

‘Oh, I see. He didn’t make the axe. He made the handle and wedged it in.’ He held the axe in his hand turning it over and over. Suddenly she wanted to play. She had not played except with herself or with the colt in the pasture for more than a year. She dared not snatch the young man’s cap from his head; it was very new and clean, and sweet smells came out of it, new-cap smells. His soft collar was open at the throat, lying easily back, the blue faded a little, the shoulders of the shirt faded even more in the sun. She could have put her finger on the faintly blue threads, but she snatched the axe and ran across the creek, laughing.

‘I won’t run after you. What I want with you, Louse Patch!’ A strange voice ran over the creek stones, coming from the young man’s mouth.

‘Did you ever see in your time a fountain a-goen? They say that’s a pretty sight now.’ She felt diverted from her play but could not relinquish the curious hour at the point where it touched upon the world. ‘Have you ever been to London Town? Or to Mexico City or to the Tropic of Cancer? Do men really get sponges outen the sea, do you know? Did you ever go a-washen in the ocean?’