Every master of Folly Corner had been a Jayne, and every male Jayne had been a Jethro since the first farmer had hidden his pet mare for ten days in a cellar so that Cromwell’s Ironsides should not steal her. The room was always cool because the yew threw a continual shadow. Gainah, sitting without a glint of sun in her chilly blue gown and with her feet flat on the stone floor, seemed to have no part with the hot, throbbing world outside. They were threshing on the farm; the whirring sound hummed in and the smell from the engine hung on the air. On the south wall a man, by her orders, was cutting back the foliage from the vine so that the sun might get freely at the Sweet-water grapes. In a few weeks it would be time to think about wine-making. The busiest time of the year was coming on. She hadn’t a moment to waste. She should at that moment have been straining the mushroom-juice from the salt and boiling it with spices. But the letter, fluttering in her veined, gnarled hand, had made her an idle woman before noon. She read it again with the weighty deliberation of an almost illiterate person. It was written in a dashing but undecided hand, and the words were stilted. Evidently the writer had been ill at ease. She got up stiffly at last and moved about the room, flicking a duster over the ancient furniture. There was an oak cupboard reaching to the ceiling--a double corner cupboard with delicate brass escutcheons and an inlaid border of boxwood. She ran the duster down the dark panels and breathed softly on the brass. Then she took out her keys from her apron pocket and opened the doors of the upper half. There were three shelves, the edge of each scalloped out. On every shelf were bottles and jars full of preserves and pickles. She touched them quite tenderly, looking at the faintly written labels, pursing up her colorless lips and moving her head spasmodically. She shut the cupboard at last and went slowly on her journey round the room. She dusted the oak sideboard, the long oak table, with the form against the wall and the carved joint stools--the high one for the master, the low one for the dame--at each end. She dusted the chairs, some of solid oak, some of golden beech with rush seats. She dusted the clock; its hand pointed ominously to twelve.