In summer cold, in winter hot!

‘Eli and Rosie, now that’s a match,’ Erastus said. ‘I seen the minute they commenced to spark each other.’

‘Eli and Rosie, they already promised to name their first after me,’ Tim said.

‘You go on!’ Rosie said. She was taking her cup for more custard.

‘Already promised. Sure. Tim T. Prather. I can see him now.’

‘A lousy brat, hit’ll be. No help to hit. Tim T. Prather! God knows!’

‘A-squallen and a-puken. I can see hit myself. Timothy T. Prather. Look at Rosie blush.’

‘You go on!’ Rosie said.

Mr Wheatley sang again, his refrain ‘Black cat kicked out the yellow cat’s eye…’

‘That-there yeller cat was a tom cat. I see two cats once out behind the barn,’ Ras said.

‘Shut up, Ras,’ Elmer said. ‘Where you been brought up?’

‘Well, I know cats, now. That-there black cat, she was a puss cat and that-there yeller he was a tom. Black, he lost an eye.’

Tim McNeal held a mug of custard over Eli Prather’s head, spilling a little.

‘I baptise you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.’

‘Quit, I already been bapsoused, soused, I say.’

‘I saw you when you was pulled up outen the water. You looked like a drowned rat.’

‘Washed your sins away, didn’t you, Eli? The creek was muddied all that next day. I went by and I seen what was left back in Dover Creek.’

‘Preacher said baptisen wouldn’t do me e’er bit of good. Said they’d have to take a scrub brush.’

‘Saw old Sallie Lou a-cryen the night she joined.’

Whoop law, Lizie poor gal,

Whoop law, Lizie Jane,

Whoop law, Lizie poor li’l gal,

She died carryen that ball and chain.

‘Saw old Sallie Lou a-cryen.’

‘Old Sallie Lou was a-mournen for her sins. I see her on the mourners’ bench that night.’

‘Home! Who said home? Home’s a fool beside this-here place. Strike her up again with a tune, Mr Jim, and let’s dance another round.’

They were going home, everyone leaving at one time, with loud goodbyes for Dorine and her mother and father flung back from the road. There were many goodbyes and parting messages.

‘Go through Wakefield’s, Jim, you and Maggie and Ras, and take Ellen home,’ Mrs Wheatley called from the house door.

Tim McNeal and Sallie Lou rode away together, driving a wild little half-broken horse that went jumping off in the crisp air. Mr Jim had a lantern to peer out the ruts of the road, and near him walked Erastus and Maggie and Jonas. Effie Turpin walked behind him to borrow of his light, and Ellen moved along among them but she thought nothing of herself. They were five shapes lying beyond herself, herself forgotten, five shapes, one of them carrying a light, a deep voice, a high voice, and muffled words, now reached up and now bent down in sweet arcs, in high bridges suddenly flung across chasms of thought, in little down-drooping sayings, low and final. All of them were beautiful to her in their closeness, their offered friendship. She walked home in silence, forgetting to speak. They were tired after the long merry evening, and their weariness made them speak gently.