by the shoulder.

"Git up, Bub."

"Go 'way," said Bub fretfully. Again she started to shake him but
stopped--Bub wasn't going to the Gap, so she let him sleep. For a little
while she looked down at him--at his round rosy face and his frowsy hair
from under which protruded one dirty fist. She was going to leave him,
and a fresh tenderness for him made her breast heave, but she did not
kiss him, for sisterly kisses are hardly known in the hills. Then she
went out into the kitchen to help her step-mother.

"Gittin' mighty busy, all of a sudden, ain't ye," said the sour old
woman, "now that ye air goin' away."

"'Tain't costin' you nothin'," answered June quietly, and she picked up
a pail and went out into the frosty, shivering daybreak to the old well.
The chain froze her fingers, the cold water splashed her feet, and when
she had tugged her heavy burden back to the kitchen, she held her red,
chapped hands to the fire.

"I reckon you'll be mighty glad to git shet o' me." The old woman
sniffled, and June looked around with a start.

"Pears like I'm goin' to miss ye right smart," she quavered, and June's
face coloured with a new feeling towards her step-mother.

"I'm goin' ter have a hard time doin' all the work and me so poorly."

"Lorrety is a-comin' over to he'p ye, if ye git sick," said June,
hardening again. "Or, I'll come back myself." She got out the dishes and
set them on the table.

"You an' me don't git along very well together," she went on placidly.
"I never heerd o' no step-mother and children as did, an' I reckon
you'll be might glad to git shet o' me."

"Pears like I'm going to miss ye a right smart," repeated the old woman
weakly.

June went out to the stable with the milking pail. Her father had spread
fodder for the cow and she could hear the rasping of the ears of corn
against each other as he tumbled them into the trough for the old
sorrel. She put her head against the cow's soft flank and under her
sinewy fingers two streams of milk struck the bottom of the tin pail
with such thumping loudness that she did not hear her father's step;
but when she rose to make the beast put back her right leg, she saw him
looking at her.

"Who's goin' ter milk, pap, atter I'm gone?"

"This the fust time you thought o' that?" June put her flushed cheek
back to the flank of the cow. It was not the first time she had thought
of that--her step-mother would milk and if she were ill, her father or
Loretta. She