"Why, Dorinda, I didn't know you'd be here to dinner!" her mother exclaimed. "Is your head bad again?" "Yes, I wasn't feeling so well, and there wasn't much to do at the store." "I thought Monday was the busiest day." How like her mother that was! She could never let a thing drop. Some demon of contradiction impelled her to find a point of offense everywhere. There was a glass pitcher of buttermilk on the table. A little boy, the son of William Snead, had brought it over early in the morning, as soon as Miss Tabitha had churned. Lifting the pitcher, Dorinda filled the five glasses standing in a circle at the end of the table. As she handed a glass to her father, she looked at him with a grave impersonal sentiment, as if he were a part of the farm that she was leaving. Nothing, not even her mother's nervous nagging, could annoy her to-day. She felt only a despairing tenderness, like a mist of tears, in her heart. "I'm sorry you ain't well, daughter," Joshua said, as he took the glass from her hand; and she felt that he had put an incalculable affection into the words. It was the only remark he made during the meal, and ordinary as it was, it seemed to bring her closer to him than she had ever been in her life. Or was it only because she was parting from him so soon? Everything was precious to her now, precious and indescribably sad and lovely. If she were to speak a word, she knew that she should burst into tears. In the afternoon, when she had helped her mother hang out the clothes at the back of the house, she came indoors and waited for an opportunity to bring down the carpet bag. "Perhaps I've always tried too hard," she thought wearily. "If I'd just give up and let things drift, it might be that something would go right." She dropped on the bottom step of the staircase; but she had no sooner decided to give up the struggle than she heard her mother's voice telling her that she was going down into the garden. "The last of those tomatoes will spoil if I don't pick them," she said. "Do you want me to help you?" Dorinda called back. "No, the sun is kind of sickening. You'd better keep out of it. There ain't much left after the storm, but I might as well use the tomatoes."