The procession soon reached us. The wood-carrier threw the log into the yard. “There’s firewood,” she sang. She vaulted over the fence, displaying iron-heeled brogans, thick red stockings, and a red-lined skirt. There was a smear of earth on cheek and chin. Her face was a sunburned, dust-mired roseleaf. She swept off her hat. She bowed ironically. She said: “Howdy. What might be your name?” I did not tell my name. She fell on her knees. She drank from her hands at the spring. I could feel the cold water warring with the sunshine in her sinews. She would never have done with splashing eyelids and ears, and cheeks and red arms and throat. The rosebushes behind her leaped in the wind. The boy and his mother and the grandmother knelt at that same place and splashed after that same manner. Then the grandmother nudged me. “Wash,” she said. I washed. We climbed into that dove-cote block-house on stilts. We ate like four plough-horses and a colt. We consumed corn-bread and fat pork, then corn-bread and beans, then corn-bread and butter. I ate supper, breakfast, and dinner in three quarters of an hour. III A BRIEF SIESTA Working a farm of fields that stand on edge, without men to help, and without much machinery, makes women into warriors or kills them. The grandmother and mother were no longer women. Even when they caressed the boy their faces were furrowed with invincible will-power. But Lady Iron-Heels still a woman, was confused in the alternative of manhood or death. She was indeed a flower not yet torn to pieces by the wind, greatly shaken, and therefore blooming the faster. There was a red ribbon streaming over the gray rag-carpet. Lady Iron-Heels stooped, gave the ribbon a jerk, and a banjo came snarling from under the bed. She sat on the warring colors of the crazy-quilt, and played a dance-tune, storming the floor with one heel. She grew pensive. She sang:-- “We shall rest in the fair and happy land Just across on the ever-green shore, Sing the song of Moses and the Lamb (by and by) And dwell with Jesus evermore.” Her neck had a yellow handkerchief round it. A brown lock swept across her leaping throat. Her cheeks and chin were bold as her iron heels. Underneath the precious silken sunburn, the blood was beating, beating, and trying to thicken into manhood to fight off death. After the music the ladies dipped snuff in the circle around the dim fire. IV “THAT’S ALL THE CHURCH I GET” I made a great palaver to Iron-Heels about giving me the banjo ribbon. She consented easily. Coquetry was not her specialty. “What might be your name?” she asked. There was no dodging now. The old woman spoke up as though to save me pain: “His name is Nicholas. But he is no kin to Lawyer Nicholas of Flagpond.” After a long silence the girl said: “We came from Flagpond, once upon a time.” She had been looking out the door at the clear bowl of the spring, and the reflection of the tall bushes, leaping in the wind.