Josiah, who had reached the door on his way out, stopped and looked back with a surly expression. With his unshaven face, where the stubby growth of a beard was just visible, and his short crooked legs, he bore still some grotesque resemblance to his younger brother, as if the family pattern had been tried first in caricature. "I've got as much as I can do over yonder in the east meadow," he growled. "You or Pa will have to look after those planting beds." Rufus frowned while he reached for the last scrap of butter. There would be none for his mother and Dorinda; but if this fact had occurred to him, and it probably had not, he would have dismissed it as an unpleasant reflection. Since he was a small child he had never lacked the courage of his appetite. "What's the use of my trying to do anything when you and Pa are so set you won't let me have my way about it?" he asked. "I'd have moved those tobacco beds long ago, if you'd let me." "Well, they've always been thar, son," Joshua observed in a peaceable manner. He stood in the doorway, blowing clouds of smoke over his pipe, while he scraped the caked mud from his boots. His humble, friendly eyes looked up timidly, like the eyes of a dog that is uncertain whether he is about to receive a pat or a blow. "Besides, we ain't got the manure to waste on new ground," Josiah added, with his churlish frown. "We need all the stable trash we can rake and scrape for the fields." Mrs. Oakley, bringing a plate of fresh cakes as a peace offering, came over to the table. "Don't you boys begin to fuss again," she pleaded wearily. "It's just as much as I can do to keep going anyway, and when you start quarrelling it makes me feel as if I'd be obliged to give up. You'd just as well take all these cakes, Rufus. I can make some more for Dorinda by the time she is ready." Dorinda, who was eating dry bread with her coffee, made a gesture of exasperated sympathy. "I don't want any cakes, Ma. I'm going to start washing up just as soon as you sit down and eat your breakfast. If you'd try to swallow something, whether you want it or not, your neuralgia would be better." Mrs. Oakley shook her head, while she dragged her body like an empty garment back to the stove. From the way she moved she seemed to have neither bone nor muscle, yet her physical flabbiness was sustained, Dorinda knew, by a force that was indomitable. "I don't feel as if I could touch a morsel," she answered, pressing her fingers over her drawn brow and eyes. "Oh, Rufus can eat his head off, but he'll never work to earn his keep," Josiah grumbled under his breath. "Well, I'm not a slave, anyway, like you and Pa," Rufus flared up. "I'd let the farm rot before it would be my master." Josiah had pushed past his father in the doorway. A chill draught blew in, and out of the draught his slow, growling voice floated back. "Somebody's got to be a slave. If Ma didn't slave for you, you'd have to, I reckon, or starve."