A dim smoky light would shine out from the kitchen where Nellie had placed a supper on the table. Henry was always very tired after his day in the fields, walking slowly and stiffly. Sometimes Nellie was angry because they came in late, but often she was full of talk. She had seen this one or that go by along the farm road, one of the Townleys or O’Shays, people living on the small farms along the river. A wagon had broken down by the pond and spilled a load of hay, everybody running from all sides. The beans were right good seasoned with a scrap of jowl meat. Ellen must make fast that hole in the fence or else the cow would be in with the calf before morning. She was out of soda and salt, and there was not a dusten of meal in the house, and if they expected any more victuals they could fetch her some. Sometimes there was no oil for the lamp, and the gloom would settle over their spirits and over the food. They would fumble their way to bed, dreary sequel to a day spent in the sun and the wind, in the rain or grey mists. But neither the unlit house nor the stumbling on the stairs, nor tired muscles, nor the cruel evenings when there was no salt in the bread and Nellie angry, cruel evenings when the rain crept on the yellowed wall, could take the eagerness out of Ellen’s day or the memory of it out of her night. People knowing her, having her in their thoughts, saying things to her, coupling her acts with their acts – ‘Take the calves in as soon as Ellen gets through.’ The days ran by quickly, mounting higher and higher; she felt herself spreading over the farm. Evening after evening she would go lightly up the stairs with the coming of dark, a little impatient with the night for its interruptions and impatient with her tired body. Or one evening in June when a soft breeze full of earthy freshness spread through the cabin, coming from the south hill where a little marsh lay under willows, tears came to her breast and a strong hand was laid on her vitals. She sat on her cot, too wretched to unrobe herself. The perpetual sadness of youth had flowed upward to engulf her. She was unable to gather her sense of it into a thought.

‘Oh, why am I here and what is it all for anyway? What is it is a-beaten down on my breath? I’m a-fallen through the world and there’s no end to the top and no end to the bottom. Mammy a-getten up and a-cooken and a-goen to bed and Pappy works all day, and we have to eat and we have to wear and we have to have fire, and there’s no end to anything.’

Twilight settled down into the room with diffused shadows and the walls sank out of sight. The nightjars were crying in the sky and a bleat of sheep would come now and then across the half-dark, sadder than she could bear.