uzz ate little. His
mother, forever between the stove and the table, ate less. But that was
nothing unusual in her. She waited on the others, but mostly she hovered
about the boy.

"Ernie, you ain't eaten your potatoes. Look how nice an' mealy they
are."

"Don't want none."

"Ernie, would you rather have a baked apple than the raspberry preserve?
I fixed a pan this morning."

"Naw. Lemme alone. I ain't hungry."

He slouched from the table. Minnie, teacup in hand, regarded him over
its rim with wide, malicious eyes. "I saw that Kearney girl go by here
before supper, and she rubbered in like everything."

"You're a liar," said Buzz, unemotionally.

"I did so! She went by and then she came back again. I saw her both
times. Say, I guess I ought to know her. Anybody in town'd know
Kearney."

Buzz had been headed toward the front porch. He hesitated and turned,
now, and picked up the newspaper from the sitting-room sofa. Pa Werner,
in trousers, shirt and suspenders, was padding about the kitchen with
his pipe and tobacco. He came into the sitting room now and stood a
moment, his lips twisted about the pipe-stem. The pipe's putt-putting
gave warning that he was about to break into unaccustomed speech. He
regarded Buzz with beady, narrowed eyes.

"You let me see you around with that Kearney girl and I'll break every
bone in your body, and hers too. The hussy!"

"Oh, you will, will you?"

Ma, who had been making countless trips from the kitchen to the back
garden with water pail and sprinkling can sagging from either arm, put
in a word to stay the threatening storm. "Now, Pa! Now, Ernie!" The two
men subsided into bristling silence.

Suddenly, "There she is again!" shrilled Minnie, from her bedroom. Buzz
shrank back in his chair. Old man Werner, with a muttered oath, went to
the open doorway and stood there, puffing savage little spurts of smoke
streetward. The Kearney girl stared brazenly at him as she strolled
slowly by, a slim and sinister figure. Old man Werner watched her until
she passed out of sight.

"You go gettin' mixed up with dirt like that," threatened he, "and I'll
learn you. She'll be hangin' around the mill yet, the brass-faced thing.
If I hear of it I'll get the foreman to put her off the place. You'll
stay home to-night. Carry a pail of water for your ma once."

"Carry it yourself."

Buzz, with a wary eye up the street, slouched out to the front porch,
into the twilight of the warm May even