Eight o’clock was the supper hour on the farm in the summertime, when every hour of daylight had to be spent in the orchards and fields. When the long dining table, covered with red-and-brown-checked oilcloth, was finally set, down to the last iron-handled knife, Sally was faint with hunger, for supper was at six at the orphanage. Sally had peeled a huge dishpan of potatoes, had shredded a giant head of pale green cabbage for coleslaw, had watched the pots of cooking string beans, turnips and carrots; had rolled in flour and then fried great slabs of round steak—all under the critical eye of Mrs. Carson, who had found herself free to pick over the day’s harvest of blackberries for canning. “I suppose we’ll have to let Sally eat at the table with us,” Pearl grumbled to her mother, heedless of the fact that Sally overheard. “In the city a family wouldn’t dream of sitting down to table with the servants. I’m sick of living on a farm and treating the hired help like members of the family.” “I thought you liked having David Nash sit at table with us,” Mrs. Carson reminded her. “Well, David’s different. He’s a university student and a football hero,” Pearl defended herself. “But the other hired men and the Orphans’ Home girl—” Clem Carson appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Supper ready?” “Yes, Papa. Thanks for the candy, but I do wish you’d get it in a box, not in a paper sack,” Pearl pouted. “I’ll ring the bell. Hurry up and wash before the others come in.” While Clem Carson was pumping water into a tin wash basin, just inside the kitchen door, Pearl swung the big copper dinner bell, standing on the narrow back porch, her lavender silk skirt fluttering about her thick legs. Sally fled to the dining room then, ashamed to have David Nash see her in the betraying uniform of the orphanage. She had obediently set nine places at the long table, not knowing who all of those nine would be, but she found out before many minutes passed. Clem Carson sat at one end of the table, Mrs. Carson at the other. And before David and the other hired men appeared, a tiny, bent little old lady, with kind, vague brown eyes and trembling hands, came shuffling in from somewhere to seat herself at her farmer son’s right hand. Sally learned later that everyone called her Grandma, and that she was Clem Carson’s widowed mother. Immediately behind the little old lady came a big, hulking, loose-jointed man of middle age, with a slack, grinning mouth, a stubble of gray beard on his receding chin, a vacant, idiotic smile in his pale eyes. At sight of Sally, shrinking timidly against the chair which was to be hers, the half-wit lunged toward her like a playful, overgrown puppy. One of his clammy hands, pale because they could not be trusted with farm work, reached out and patted her cheek. “Pur-ty girl, pur-ty sister,” he articulated slowly, a light of pleasure gleaming in the pale vacancy of his eyes.