"Mother," I says, "I'm twenty years old. You call me 'Cosma,' and let me call you 'Mother.' And don't feel you have to scold me all the time." "I'll quit scolding you fast enough," she says, "when you quit deserving it. Go and get out of them togs, the dishes are waiting for you." I went in the house. Mis' Bingy was not there, up-stairs or down. I went back to the door and asked about her. "Why, she's gone home," says Mother. "You didn't s'pose she was going to live here, did you?" "Home?" I says. "Where that man is?" "We can't all pick out our homes," she says, scrubbing the boards. Pa heard her. He was just coming in from the barn with the swill buckets to fill. "That's you," he says, "finding fault with the hands that feeds you. Where'd you be, I'd like to know, if it wasn't for this home and me? In the poorhouse." Mother straightened up on her knees by the well. "Mean to say I don't pay my keep?" she says. For a minute she seemed young and somebody, like when she was asleep. "Not when you dish up such pickings as you done this morning," says Pa. She screamed out something at him, and I ran across the yard toward Mis' Bingy's. They were going on so hard they forgot about me. The grove was still. I wished _he_ could have seen it. As soon as I got in it, I forgot about home, and the time before come back on me, like some of me singing. That was it--some of me singing. But I see right off the grove was different. It was almost as if he _had_ been in it, and had showed me things about it. I begun looking out at it the way I thought he'd be looking at it. There seemed to be more of the grove than I thought there was. Then I thought how he'd never be there in it, and how I'd prob'ly never see him again, and something in me hurt, and I didn't want to go on. What was the use?... What was the use?... What was the use?... Mis' Bingy's house lay all still in the sun. The sunflowers and hollyhocks by the back door and the chickens picking around looked all peaceful and like home. I thought Mr. Bingy must be sleeping off his drunk, and her keeping quiet not to disturb him. The kitchen door was standing open and I stepped up on the porch. And then I heard a terrible cry, from right there in the room. "Go back--back, Cossy!" Mis' Bingy said. "He'll kill you!" All in an instant I took it in. She was sitting crouched on the bed, shielding the baby with a pillow. And he set close beside the door, sharpening his hatchet. He jumped up when he see me. I remember his red eyes and his teeth, and his thin whiskers that showed his chin through. Then he sprang forward, right toward me and on to me, with his hatchet in his hand.