e corners of her eyes. "Oh, Marthy!" she cried
remorsefully, setting down the gravy bowl that she might pat Marthy on
her fat, age-rounded shoulder. "What a little beast I am! I shouldn't
have told that; but honest, I thought it was an honor. I--I just
worshiped that pig!"

Jase maundered in at that moment, and Marthy, catching up a corner of
her dirty apron--Billy Louise could not remember ever seeing Marthy in
a perfectly clean dress or apron--wiped away what traces of emotion her
weathered face could reveal. Also, she turned and glared at Jase with
what Billy Louise considered a perfectly uncalled-for animosity. In
reality, Marthy was covertly looking for visible symptoms of the
all-goneness. She shut her harsh lips together tightly at what she
saw; Jase certainly was puffy under his watery, pink-rimmed eyes, and
the withered cheeks above his thin graying beard really did have a
pasty, gray look.

"D' you turn them calves out into the corral?" she demanded, her voice
harder because of her secret uneasiness.

"I was goin' to, but the wind's changed into the north, 'n' I thought
mebby you wouldn't want 'em out." Jase turned back aimlessly to the
door. His voice was getting cracked and husky, and the deprecating
note dominated pathetically all that he said. "You'll have to face the
wind goin' home," he said to Billy Louise. "More 'n likely you'll be
facin' snow, too. Looks bad, off that way."

"You go on and turn them calves out!" Marthy commanded him harshly.
"Billy Louise ain't goin' home if it storms; I sh'd think you'd know
enough to know that."

"Oh, but I'll have to go, anyway," the girl interrupted. "Mommie can't
be there alone; she'd worry herself to death if I didn't show up by
dark. She worries about every little thing since daddy died. I ought
to have gone before--or I oughtn't to have come. But she was worrying
about you, Marthy; she hadn't seen or heard of you for a month, and she
was afraid you might be sick or something. Why don't you get someone
to stay with you? I think you ought to."

She looked toward the door, which Jase had closed upon his departure.
"If Jase should--get sick, or anything--"

"Jase ain't goin' to git sick," Marthy retorted glumly. "Yuh don't
want to let him worry yuh, Billy Louise. If I'd worried every time he
yowled around about being sick, I'd be dead or crazy by now. I dunno
but maybe I'll have somebody to help with the work, though," she added,
afte