Trax was sleeping away the bright March morning. Matt made no effort to be silent about her washing. She dipped noisily into the rain barrel. When the soft water was gone she drew from the well, rattling galvanized buckets. Elly sat on the bottom step of the rear stoop, scuffling her bare toes in the sand. She wore the blue silk dress. Beside her was a handful of her own garments in need of washing, a pair of silk stockings and two or three pieces of underwear. Matt passed in front of her to go to the clothes line.

Elly said, “Trax give me this dress.”

The woman did not seem to hear her.

Elly continued. “Reckon it’ll wash? It’s spotted.”

Matt did not answer. She hung flour-sacking towels on the line. The girl picked up her small pile, looked uncertainly at the tub of soapsuds, laid down the clothes. She went to the tub and began rubbing on the first garment she drew from the suds. It was one of Matt’s gingham aprons. She rubbed with energy, and Matt towered over her before she noticed that the woman had left the line.

“Take your dirty hands out o’ my tub.”

The girl drew back, dripping suds from her thin arms. She turned her hands back and forth.

“They ain’t dirty,” she protested.

Matt laughed shortly. “Mighty simple, ain’t you?”

An obscure doubt brushed her, like a dove that wavers to a perch and is gone again without lighting.

“Who do you figger I am?”

The girl faced her across the wash-tub. She said gravely, “The lady lives in Trax’ house.”

“Trax’ house? Well, he lives in mine. Never heerd tell o’ no sich thing as his wife, eh?”

The girl hesitated. “Trax jest said the old woman.”

Matt breathed heavily. The girl took her silence and her questions for a mark of interest.

“Trax said you’d romp on me,” she offered confidentially, “but you ain’t.” She wrapped one bare leg around the other. “I been romped on,” she went on brightly. “Pa romped on me reg’lar.”

“You got you folks then!”

“Yessum, but I don’t know where he is. He run a blacksmith shop an’ garage offen the hard road, but he closed up an’ goed to Georgia with a lady. Then I lived with another lady down the road a piece. Trax sold her liquor, that’s how come him to know me. She moved off, an’ he takened me with him from there. Now I’m gonna live with him,” she finished, adding with studied tact “—and you.”

Trax came yawning to the rear stoop in time to see Matt walk toward the girl. Elly stared uncomprehending. He jumped to the sand and caught the woman’s muscular arms from behind.

“Don’t you touch her.” He cracked his familiar whip over her. “You hurt that gal young un an’ you’ve seed the last o’ me.”

The woman shook free from him in the strength of her rage.