Erastus found a bee-gum tree and robbed the wild bees of their fruit, carrying home their dark yellow-brown honey, wild smoke-coloured drips, to share it with the rest, a pail of it for Ellen and a pail for Dorine. Maggie and Effie were taking turns with their mother at the loom, weaving the strips of carpet, sitting now one and now another at the great rude loom on the entry porch of the cabin, beating and treading, crossing the warp into its shed and passing the great bobbin from hand to hand, hurrying against the coming of winter to buy for themselves lard and meal. Or Jonas and Elmer were harvesting Wakefield’s wheat, Elmer driving the great red reaper across the field and cutting wide ribbons of grain which fell under the knives and flowed in a stream through the trough to fall in bundles behind in the stubble. Then Jonas would gather the sheaves and stack them in even shocks, with Henry and John Bradshaw helping, and Ellen herself lending a hand one hot afternoon when sullen clouds gathered in the west. Then they raced with the coming storm, making each shock secure but building it with swift skill, Ellen carrying the bundles up for Jonas to stack. He took them from her with merry words and quick hands, his eyes on her laughing eyes and on her moist face, and once, behind two upheld sheaves, he kissed her as they met in the stubble. He laid one hand behind her neck and drew her forward quickly to kiss her mouth.

Or on Sunday, two and two together, they walked to Fairhope church yard, waiting there for the service to begin. Men would stand about among the carriages, a foot on a hub or on a wheel spoke, spitting the juice from their quids and talking in low offhandish voices, careless seemingly of whether they were heard or not, uncommitted. The women would sit in the semi-dark of the church talking, they too in low tones. Their voices came to the doorway mingled with the strange odours of the pews and the echoes that lay over each sound – crooning voices, falling into rumblings and dying away, brooding voices. They would sit in clusters waiting, and their words, ‘Joce is expecten another.’ … ‘So soon?’ … Quiet voices like the low crooning of birds, such as pigeons in flocks… ‘So soon?’ … ‘This makes six, don’t it?’ … ‘Five only… but five, that’s a houseful… And two dead.’ … Pigeons in flocks crooning. ‘Two dead… So soon!’ … ‘Dell is expecten…’ ‘Dell?’ … ‘They say… She put off a right smart while but I knowed her time’d come.’ … ‘I’m right glad. She’s no different from the rest.’ … ‘No, let her have her hard time like the balance.’ … ‘So soon!’ … ‘Poor Dell, she was taken bad, they say… Miss Min was sent for finally… They say Tom was up all night a-doen for her… But what does a man know?’ … ‘Poor Dell, she’ll see sights afore she’s done… Afore she’s done.’ … Their voices would stop at the doorway. After a while the preacher would come and then those outside would pass within, Elmer, Dorine, Jonas, Maggie, Ellen, and Sebe, sitting in a long line near the rear of the church. They heard the voice of the preacher as it broke and parted among the corners of the room and flattened against the ceiling – Rehoboam and Jeroboam, kings, and the kingdom divided, never again to unite, Rehoboam and Jeroboam, great words striking the wall, great words with jagged fringes of echoes hanging from each syllable, and the lonely kingdoms, divided and apart forever, the great sadness of the lonely kingdoms settling upon them as they sat, Elmer, Dorine, Ellen, Maggie, and even Sebe. Dorine’s dress was of new sweet cloth, bright threads like hair-lines running evenly through the white. Her own dress was fresh and new, her dress, Ellen’s, folded away all week in the box across from her bed, now lying out under her hands, the blue flowers repeating each other over and over on the field of white, small blue flowers, so small that only she and no other knew the curve and thread of each design and every faint shading of colour. And as she sat in the church a shy thought came halfway into her mind and she wondered if Jonas knew the flower of her dress a little as she knew it, and if he would know it for hers if he saw it far away from her.