His mother busied herself in an oily nimbus above the stove, frying a _linguisa_ and other things, watching her first-born all the while with convulsive tremors about her mouth which made her appear to grin, at intervals, idiotically. Va Di pounded the red table-cloth with the butt of his knife. “Ma, git a move onto that. Ain’t I told you I’m hungry?” “Well, ain’t I hurryin’?” The old woman made the _linguisa_ crackle by poking it with a knife. Va Di rubbed the back of his hand across his lips and justified himself. “Well, I’m hungry.” He ate in silence, only once raising his voice, and his hands, to bid the company be quiet. “You make me nervous,” he cried. After he had finished he got up and dusted the crumbs off his fine clothes, scratching an old spot with a thumbnail and rubbing it with his coat-cuff, ran a hand through his straight, black hair, and lounged to the front door. His mother called after him, with a curious cluck in her voice. “Where you goin’, son?” “Aw, see the town.” But he got no farther than the step to the gate, where he leaned on his elbows and gloomed at the roofs across the lane. Curious ones passed, turned back, cleared their throats, and, seeing his face, did not speak. “A kid,” he mumbled in his throat. “A kid off o’ that crooked-legged old sow.” And after another sour silence: “I never remembered what a good-looker she was. Say! And crazy about me. But.... Hell!” The moon swam high over the end of the lane, filling the dusty passage with its effulgent silver. The clear notes of town hall telling eleven floated across the huddled dwellings, and Va Di, wondering at the hour, looked about to find all the windows dark in the lane, save one toward the street end where a mandolin twinkled an Island melody. A solitary figure moved in the vista, coming nearer, a girl, dark-faced and with her dark hair piled on either side of her ears, wearing a white linen skirt and a crimson sweater. Opposite Va Di’s gate she paused to kick a twig lying in the dust and discovered the man with a slight start. “I heard you’re back,” she said, drifting easily nearer. “Glad t’ see you.” The man smoothed his mustache. “Hullo, Mary! Didn’t ’spect to see me again, eh, girlie? How’s things?” “Lookin’ up, _now_.” She leaned against the other side of the fence, smiling and fussing idly with her hair, her eyes lowered demurely. By and by she raised them, nonplussed by his failure to go on, and found him staring at the sky as if he had forgotten she was there. She drifted away, after a time, flinging her shoulders a little, and once looking back with a wounded, malignant expression. Va Di shook himself and stared after her, moved by a faint sensation of regret. “I must be turnin’ foolish,” he muttered to himself.