Dorine was pretty with her thin skin and her damp mouth, and Rosie with her big cheeks and round lips and bright round eyes. Maggie had slim hands with little broken nails and one of her front teeth was smaller than the others. She was pretty, always slow and tired, wanting to rest. Elmer had a grey lock in his black hair and his head cocked on one side when he smoked his cigarette. Sometimes he lisped his words a little; everybody liked him. Eli was big and heavy-necked, deep-chested; swelling sometimes when he talked until he looked like Squire Dorsey. He would lift his head quickly and say, ‘It is not anything of the sort,’ or ‘I do not anything of the kind, now.’ Eyes like little beads swam in his head and he would talk with all the rest while he waited for Rosie, calling out, ‘Come on, Rosie, it’s time we’s off.’ All of them liked Eli. She thought of herself as somebody Jonas liked, as filled with an inner sweetness, thought thus as she went about her tasks and ways, the thought mounting with her as she mounted the stairs and bursting upon her anew as she passed through a door. She would take the turkeys through the small gate and as she passed within the enclosure Jonas’s words gathered into a nucleus and spread wide with the opening out of the grass lot and the dispersing flocks. She heard the work mules crunching their fodder and the deep voice of the mule barn rising firmly among the noises, sharp and firm, gentle, and with it came Jonas’s voice, related to it by its unlikeness and remoteness, close following.

Moonlight nights and there was church at Fairhope every night with quick singing to stir the breath and make the heart beat faster. All together, Jonas, Elmer, Eli, Rosie, Dorine, Ellen, Sebe, Maggie, they would walk each night along the road, falling into pairs or flowing together, and they would sit together in the church. Once the preacher told of hell and the damned. Then Dorine was frightened and she clung to Ellen’s hand, and when the last song was singing she whispered that she would go up to join if Ellen would, and Ellen, remembering hell, was frightened too, and with Effie and Sebe they went to the front of the church where the crowd was gathered. They walked homeward in pairs and Ellen, remembering hell, was very gentle in her way to Jonas.