“You jest as good to say you’re done. You jest as good to say you got no sense for bean-makin’. Drenna’s like to go naked, and you piddlin’ away with beans. Your young uns’d be stark if ’twa’n’t for Janey’s things from Alabamy. You know it. You take me up on steady work at ten dollars, afore I studies you ain’t wuth nothin’.”

If Drenna had been with him, he would not have touched her. He shook the old woman by the shoulders until she screeched for her neighbors. He shouted her down.

“Damn your gizzard! If I figgered like the niggers, I’d say you’d put a cunjur on my bean-field! ’Twon’t be too long ’til you sees the last o’ me. Dogged if I wouldn’t ruther do without rations than take your talk.”

They sputtered fiercely at each other. It did not occur to her to fire him, nor to him to quit.

He was excited when he came home to supper that night. He had forgotten his anger at the widow. He had forgotten his unprofitable season. He was eager with his plans for spring beans. His lunch bucket had contained the usual meal of soda biscuits and syrup, but he sat at the table, scarcely eating. Drenna listened with her grave smile.

“We got to make out on four dollars a week this winter an’ save two. I kin make me a crop o’ beans on that hammock land and I know it. I aim to have six acres ready, come spring. Does the rains come on to drownd ’em, I’ll ditch. Does frost come, I’ll lay me a smudge. And dog take it, Drenna, if they ain’t no rain at all, and them beans goes to swivvellin’, I kin water ’em a gourdful at a time.”

The three-year-old nodded gravely.

“I kin water ’em.”

Drenna smiled at him.

“Tell your Daddy the whole lot of us kin tote water for him.”

“Tainter don’t always make a crop,” he went on, “and I cain’t always lose it.”

“Shore cain’t,” she agreed placidly.

Lige and Drenna planted when the red-bud came in bloom. All the signs were of warmth. Robins and bluebirds were moving north. The cautious chinaberry had put out young leaves. The last of the jasmine perfumed the roadside. Lige strode steadily up and down the long furrows, seeing nothing but the white seed dropping against the golden earth. Drenna stopped now and then to straighten her back. Her gray eyes rested on the rosy flush across the hammock. They picked out the swaying palms, precise and formal against a turquoise sky. When she bent to her work again, the half-smile habitual to her was brighter.

Lige sent her to the house when the end of the planting was in sight.