Nils screwed up his eyes. "That I don't know. When she says."

Joe threw out his chest. "Das-a way boys talks. No way for mans. Mans
say, 'You come to de church, an' get a hurry on you.' Das-a way mans
talks."

"Maybe Nils hasn't got enough to keep a wife," put in Clara ironically.
"How about that, Nils?" she asked him frankly, as if she wanted to know.

Nils looked at her coolly, raising one eyebrow. "Oh, I can keep her, all
right."

"The way she wants to be kept?"

"With my wife, I'll decide that," replied Nils calmly. "I'll give her
what's good for her."

Clara made a wry face. "You'll give her the strap, I expect, like old
Peter Oleson gave his wife."

"When she needs it," said Nils lazily, locking his hands behind his head
and squinting up through the leaves of the cherry tree. "Do you remember
the time I squeezed the cherries all over your clean dress, and Aunt
Johanna boxed my ears for me? My gracious, weren't you mad! You had both
hands full of cherries, and I squeezed 'em and made the juice fly all
over you. I liked to have fun with you; you'd get so mad."

"We _did_ have fun, didn't we? None of the other kids ever had so much
fun. We knew how to play."

Nils dropped his elbows on the table and looked steadily across at her.
"I've played with lots of girls since, but I haven't found one who was
such good fun."

Clara laughed. The late afternoon sun was shining full in her face,
and deep in the back of her eyes there shone something fiery, like the
yellow drops of Tokai in the brown glass bottle. "Can you still play, or
are you only pretending?"

"I can play better than I used to, and harder."

"Don't you ever work, then?" She had not intended to say it. It slipped
out because she was confused enough to say just the wrong thing.

"I work between times." Nils' steady gaze still beat upon her. "Don't
you worry about my working, Mrs. Ericson. You're getting like all the
rest of them." He reached his brown, warm hand across the table and
dropped it on Clara's, which was cold as an icicle. "Last call for play,
Mrs. Ericson!" Clara shivered, and suddenly her hands and cheeks grew
warm. Her fingers lingered in his a moment, and they looked at each
other earnestly. Joe Vavrika had put the mouth of the bottle to his lips
and was swallowing the last drops of the Tokai, standing. The sun, just
about to sink behind his shop, glistened on the bright glass, on his
flushed face and curly yellow hair. "Look," C