of one
window.

The floor had been painted a dull drab, but the passing of many feet
had worn the paint away in places. A stove stood in one corner. Over
the sink a tall, round-shouldered woman bent trying to get water from
an asthmatic pump.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" she said in a tone so very unpleasant that Pearl
thought she must have expected someone else.

"Yes'm," Pearl said meekly. "Who were ye expectin'?"

Mrs. Motherwell stopped pumping for a minute and looked at Pearl.

"Why didn't ye git here earlier?" she asked.

"Well," Pearl began, "I was late gettin' started by reason of the
washin' and the ironin', and Jimmy not gettin' back wid the boots. He
went drivin' cattle for Vale the butcher, and he had to have the boots
for the poison ivy is that bad, and because the sugar o' lead is all
done and anyway ma don't like to keep it in the house, for wee Danny
might eat it--he's that stirrin' and me not there to watch him now."

"Lord! what a tongue you have! Put down your things and go out and pick
up chips to light the fire with in the morning."

Pearl laid her bird-cage on a chair and was back so soon with the chips
that Mrs. Motherwell could not think of anything to say.

"Now go for the cows," she said, "and don't run them home!"

"Where will I run them to then, ma'am?" Pearl asked innocently.

"Good land, child, have I to tell you everything? Folks that can't do
without tellin' can't do much with, I say. Bring the cows to the bars,
and don't stand there staring at me."

When Pearl dashed out of the door, she almost fell over the old dog who
lay sleepily snapping at the flies which buzzed around his head. He
sprang up with a growl which died away into an apologetic yawn as she
stooped to pat his honest brown head.

A group of red calves stood at the bars of a small field plaintively
calling for their supper. It was not just an ordinary bawl, but a
double-jointed hyphenated appeal, indicating a very exhausted condition
indeed.

Pearl looked at them in pity. The old dog, wrinkling his nose and
turning away his head, did not give them a glance. He knew them. Noisy
things! Let 'em bawl. Come on!

Across the narrow creek they bounded, Pearl and old Nap, and up the
other hill where the silver willows grew so tall they were hidden in
them. The goldenrod nodded its plumy head in the breeze, and the tall
Gaillardia, brown and yellow, flickered unsteadily on its stem.

The billows of shadow swept over t