He would have on his Saturday clothes, she reflected, the blue shirt washed smooth and fine, spreading out in fair ways over his shoulders and wrinkling down to sweet smooth wrinkles by the sleeves. His straw hat would smell sweet, like varnish and like sweet chalk. His hands had little marks like tiny wells set close together behind the thumbs. His eyes would be bright and they would look at her and grow brighter. A voice said quickly, coming up as one motion from her deeper mind: ‘I saw your white all-overs the day you went washing in the creek.’

She could see the blue necktie as clearly as if it lay on the ground under her hand when she gathered the sticks. The threads of the silk lapped over and over like a woven basket, only infinitely fine, growing finer as she gazed. Perhaps he would not have his stockings on, and then there would be the skin of his ankles, or perhaps he would have on the blue overalls. The skin of his ankles was under her hands and under her eyes as she reached for the twigs, and his brown hair with its whorl at the crown, so lovely and uneven that she had wanted once to touch it her fingers and smooth it down. She shrank back from the lovely thought of his cheek and a quick voice spread across her confusion, ‘Lousy Brat! I’d be afraid to touch your lousy rags.’

Then she gave back the whole thought to her mind to play over. She shrank from nothing. Why not go? Soft white skin. Hands that were stronger than her own and softer to touch. Why not? Why was she always there? Nobody to see but Artie Pinkston and her youngones. Her blood leaped before her up the canyon.

But her feet kept among the littered grass and weeds and her hand outstretched for the cut fagots. The sticks were very clear and plain to see in the afternoon light. She gathered the last of the armful and went downstream slowly, the axe in her right hand, the wood piled on her left arm and shoulder.

When the walnut stumps were gone, hauled away to town in a wagon, the men no longer worked on the hillside. Ellen avoided going to the creek ravine although her mother demanded wood. She searched for burning pieces about the yard and the lower pasture, or, if none could be found here, she hid in the tall weeds beyond the garden patch and gave no heed to her mother’s calls.

‘That lazy triflen brat! I got no firewood!’

She would sit among the high growth, covered with shame, shame drawing downward in her face and weighing down her head. Joe Trent beckoning to her, hiding in the brush, waiting up in the ravine, passing up from Bodine’s with a tool; she never saw him closer. Nor did she ever speak of him to either of her parents. Her mind tossed up its sayings even while it denied her the solace of thought. ‘Where’d you go if you got set out on the pike?… Somebody to know all my enduren life…’ She pictured them out on the pike, herself and Henry and Nellie. They would walk away down the road, far, on and on, or they would sit by a creek to rest. They would sleep in the quilts and there would be something, perhaps, to eat. In two days they could be gone far, and she would be glad. But she was sitting in the tall weeds and they were there as before; Goodin was gone from the country and Hep Bodine, his stiff legs walking unevenly up and down his hills, could not farm without Henry… ‘Somebody to know all my enduren life… There’s no knowen how lovely I am… How lovely… Lousy rags… I’d be afraid to touch… Take a walk… Any day you say…’