Ollie sat on the kitchen steps and turned all this over in her thoughts
after Isom had gone to bed.

Perhaps in the new bondboy, who had come there to serve with her, she
would find one with whom she might talk and sometimes ease her heart.
She hoped that it might be so, for she needed chatter and laughter and
the common sympathies of youth, as a caged bird requires the seed of its
wild life. There was hope in the new farm-hand which swept into her
heart like a refreshing breeze. She would look him over and sound him
when he worked, choring between kitchen and barn.

Ollie had been a poor man's child. Isom had chosen her as he would have
selected a breeding-cow, because nature, in addition to giving her a
form of singular grace and beauty, had combined therein the utilitarian
indications of ability to plentifully reproduce her kind. Isom wanted
her because she was alert and quick of foot, and strong to bear the
burdens of motherhood; for even in the shadow of his decline he still
held to the hope of his youth--that he might leave a son behind him to
guard his acres and bring down his name.

Ollie was no deeper than her opportunities of life had made her. She had
no qualities of self-development, and while she had graduated from a
high school and still had the ornate diploma among her simple treasures,
learning had passed through her pretty ears like water through a funnel.
It had swirled and choked there a little while, just long enough for her
to make her "points" required for passing, then it had sped on and left
her unencumbered and free.

Her mother had always held Ollie's beauty a greater asset than mental
graces, and this early appraisement of it at its trading value had made
Ollie a bit vain and ambitious to mate above her family. Isom Chase had
held out to her all the allurements of which she had dreamed, and she
had married him for his money. She had as well taken a stone to her soft
bosom in the hope of warming it into yielding a flower.

Isom was up at four o'clock next morning. A few minutes after him Ollie
stumbled down the stairs, heavy with the pain of broken sleep. Joe was
snoring above-stairs; the sound penetrated to the kitchen down the
doorless casement.

"Listen to that feller sawin' gourds!" said Isom crabbedly.

The gloom of night was still in the kitchen; in the corner where the
stove stood it was so dark that Ollie had to grope her way, yawning
heavily, feeling that she would willingly