‘I saw you in the field with your white stockings on.’

‘How far would a body have to go now to get to the place in the world where it’s dark all winter?’

‘What would you say to taking a walk with me up to the thicket in the head of the valley?’

‘What’s “take a walk”?’

‘Any day you say, we’ll go.’

Sometimes his clothes were made of thin brown stuff with little flecks of amber hidden in the mesh, soft and cool. Another time the threads of blue lapped over each other in the fresh blue necktie, neatly and firmly set, little blue dots set over and over on the white surface of his shirt, unfaded and fair, small as blue dust sprinkled evenly over braided snow. Today the intimacy of the opened throat and of the grey clothes that were frayed at the trouser hem, of the fading blue, came to her as something she shared. He made his voice very low, ‘Any day you say.’

She dragged her bit of brush back to the woodpile and chopped it into fagots. She saw Mr Bodine stalking through the lower pasture, going up from the way of the cabin, and she carried the wood to the hearth in apprehension, looking fearfully at her mother’s face.

‘Mr Hep is a-looken for a heifer that’s astray. Did you see e’er one?’ Nellie asked.

‘Ne’er one did I see.’

Mr Bodine spying about in the dusk and losing a yearling, suspicious of them, it was an evil token. But Joe Trent’s eyes were bright, gathering brightness as she set out the plates for supper, as she wondered what would become of herself and her mother if Mr Bodine told them to go. She did not know how to dispossess them of their goods. She could carry the bedding but what would she do with the bed and how would they move the table and the kitchen safe, acquired after much labour and much waiting? The little bed in the loft became very dear to her, partaking of her self-love and anxiety and standing in need of defence. Joe Trent’s eyes were full of gentle looks, but they could draw down into little tubes of looks that went into her dress, under her skin, into her blood. They looked at her blood running under her skin. His bright gentle looks spread through the cabin, lying over all things she saw as she laid the bare table and drew the chairs in place. She could not separate three diffused images, the probing look that went into her flesh, that came flowing from narrowed eyes, the uneasy feel of the house when her mother dished up the food with quick, apprehensive gestures or thumped down a cup with hostile and awkward elbow movements, and the warmth of a smile bent upon her face and running with kindness in her blood. Her mind gave equal and diffused values to the voices within and without.

‘He must like me, even if my dress is old-styled and o’nary. He might be somebody I’d know all my whole enduren life.’