Following her mother's glance, Dorinda saw her father's bowed figure toiling along the path on the edge of the vegetable garden. Far beyond him, where a field had been abandoned because it contained a gall, where nothing would grow, she could just discern the scalloped reaches of the broomsedge, rippling, in the lilac-coloured distance, like still water at sunset. Yes, old Matthew was right. What the broomsedge caught, it never relinquished. Lifting the wooden bucket from the shelf on the back porch, she poured the stale water over a thin border of portulaca by the steps, and started at a run for the well. By the time Joshua had reached the house, she had brought the bucket of sparkling water, and had a gourd ready for him. "You must be worn out, Pa. Don't you want a drink?" "That I do, honey." He took the gourd from her, and raised it to his bearded lips where the sweat hung in drops. "Powerful hot, ain't it?" "It's scorching. And you've been up since before day. I'll hunt worms for you to-morrow." She was thinking, while she spoke, that her father was no longer young, and that he should try to spare himself. But she knew that it was futile to remind him of this. He had never spared himself in her memory, and he would not begin now just because he was old. The pity of it was that, even if he wore himself out in the effort to save his crop from the drought or the worms, there was still the possibility that the first killing frost would come too soon and inflict as heavy a damage. He shook his head with a chuckle of pride. "Thar's no use yo' spilin' yo' hands. I've hired a parcel of Uncle Toby Moody's little niggers to hunt 'em in the mornin'. If they kill worms every day till Sunday, I've promised 'em the biggest watermelon I've got in the ice-house." Before going on to feed the horses, he stopped to wash his face in the tin basin on the back porch. "I declar' I must be gittin' on," he remarked cheerfully. "I've got shootin' pains through all my j'ints." This was nearer a complaint than any speech she had ever heard from him, and she looked at him anxiously while he dried his face on the roller towel. "You ought to take things more easily, Pa. The way you work is enough to kill anybody." "Wall, I'll take my ease when the first snow falls," he responded jocosely. "But you won't. You work just as hard in winter." "Is that so?" He appeared genuinely surprised. "I never calculated! The truth is I've got the land on my back, an' it's drivin' me. Land is a hard driver." "And a good steed, they say," she answered. "If you could only get the better of it." He smiled wistfully, and she watched the clay-coloured skin above his thick beard break into diverging fissures. "We've got to wait for that, I reckon, till my ship comes in. It takes money to get money, daughter."