itchen door, the grape-vine rustling over his head, watching Ollie as
she went to and fro about her work of clearing away. Morgan was in the
door, his back against the jamb, leisurely smoking his pipe. Once in a
while a snoring beetle passed in above his head to join his fellows
around the lamp. As each recruit to the blundering company arrived,
Morgan slapped at him as he passed, making Ollie laugh. On the low,
splotched ceiling of the kitchen the flies shifted and buzzed, changing
drowsily from place to place.

"Isom ought to put screens on the windows and doors," said Morgan,
looking up at the flies.

"Mosquito bar, you mean?" asked Ollie, throwing him a smile over her
shoulder as she passed.

"No, I mean wire-screens, everybody's gettin' 'em in now; I've been
thinkin' of takin' 'em on as a side-line."

"It'll be a cold day in July when Isom spends any money just to keep
_flies_ out of his house!" said she.

Morgan laughed.

"Maybe if a person could show him that they eat up a lot of stuff he'd
come around to it," Morgan said.

"Maybe," said Ollie, and both of them had their laugh again.

Joe moved on the bench, making it creak, an uneasy feeling coming over
him. Close as Isom was, and hard-handed and mean, Joe felt that there
was a certain indelicacy in his wife's discussion of his traits with a
stranger.

Ollie had cleared away the dishes, washed them and placed them in the
cupboard, on top of which the one clock of that household stood,
scar-faced, but hoarse-voiced when it struck, and strong as the
challenge of an old cock. Already it had struck nine, for they had been
late in coming to supper, owing to Joe's long set-to with his conscience
at the edge of the hazel-copse in the woods.

Joe got up, stretching his arms, yawning.

"Goin' to bed, heh?" asked Morgan.

"No, I don't seem to feel sleepy tonight," Joe replied.

He went into the kitchen and sat at the table, his elbows on the board,
his head in his hands, as if turning over some difficult problem in his
mind. Presently he fell to raking his shaggy hair with his long fingers;
in a moment it was as disorderly as the swaths of clover hay lying out
in the moonlight in the little stone-set field.

Morgan had filled his pipe, and was after a match at the box behind the
stove, with the familiarity of a household inmate. He winked at Ollie,
who was then pulling down her sleeves, her long day's work being done.

"Well, do you think you'll be elec