Two people were coming along the path. Luke and I sat still--it was so dark nobody could notice us where we were. I heard them talking and then I heard Ma's voice. I knew right off Henny had told her about Keddie, and she was going to try to get Mis' Bingy to come home with us. " ... On my feet from morning till night," she was saying, "till it seems as though I should drop. I don't know how I stand it." Pa was with her. "Stand it, stand it!" he says. "Anybody'd think you had the pest in the house. I'm sick of hearin' you whine." "I know," says Ma, "nobody thinks I'm worth anything now. But after I'm dead and gone--" "Oh, shut up," says Pa. And they went by us. I stood up, all of a sudden. Anything would be better than home. "Luke--" I says. In a few years maybe him and me would be talking the same as Ma and Pa. Maybe he'd be hanging around the Dew Drop Inn, same as Keddie Bingy. What of it? All women took the chance. "Luke," I says, "all right." "Do you mean you will?" says Luke. I liked him the best I'd ever liked him, the way he says that. "I said 'all right,'" I says. "You be a good husband to me and I'll be a good wife to you." Luke kind of scared me, he was so glad. On the way home he didn't talk much. As soon as we got to our house I made him go. I'd begun to feel the tired way I do every time I'm with him--as if I'd ironed or done up fruit. Ma and Pa hadn't come back yet. I went up to Ma's and my room and lit the lamp. It was on a bracket, and stuck up behind it was a picture of me when I was a baby. I just stood and stared at it. I hadn't thought of it before--but what if Luke and I should have one? "No, sir! No, sir! No, sir!" I says, all the while I put myself to bed. CHAPTER II Toward morning I heard somebody scream. I was dreaming that I was with Luke in the grove, and that he touched my hand, and that it was me that screamed. I heard it again and again, with another noise. Then I woke up. It wasn't me. It was somebody else. I sat up in bed and shook Ma. She snores, and I couldn't hardly wake her. By the time she sat up I heard Pa move. When we got to the stairs I heard him at the back door. "What's wanted?" I heard him say.