I never had the hardihood to probe into the sleeping arrangements of Serena’s household; but I could see the two beds in the room where they kept a fire, sat and talked, picked the banjo and received their company. I knew there were beds in the loft for the boys, and that granpap placed his own there when he chose to live with Len and exchange, for a time, Coretta’s fidgety ambition for the cheery fatalism of Serena. There was no bed in the room where they cooked and ate, but this was for lack of space only. The necessarily long table, benches, and chairs devoured any vacancy left by the cook-stove, cupboard, and water-shelf. From chance remarks I gathered that if visitors were men-folks they ascended to the loft; if women, Len went above, leaving the guests below with Serena and the girls. There were “ticks” which could be placed on the floor when the beds overflowed, as they did quite frequently. Just where they were put was something to wonder over, but I kept the whole matter in a sort of kindly murk, waiting the day when I should be able to act with deference due to an articulate conscience. Because of Serena’s apathy toward gardening, canning, drying, and preserving, and her persistent habit of letting the children “run along and milk,” the family diet through the greater part of the year was without surprise or adventure. Corn bread, coffee, fried meat, ’taters, and ’lasses satisfied hunger, with no concessions to either infancy or age. Let me not forget pickled beans. That dish was a mainstay for babe and man. But notwithstanding the depressing fare, there was always company at Len’s. Constant good humor and unflagging welcome made for an open house. “Stay with us,” Len would say, and add the mountain jargon, which in this case was almost literally true: “We can give you plenty o’ spring water, pickled beans, an’ satisfaction.” Sometimes I tried a carefully padded remonstrance, such as: “Don’t you think it is too hard on Serena to have so much company?” “Reenie don’t bother hersef. They take what comes.” “With so many children, Len, you’ll kill yourself soon enough without providing for others.” “You kain’t call what I give ’em providin’. I tell Reenie to hand ’em out some salt an’ let ’em pick ’round the yard.” And with his laughter filling the air, he would rush off to whichever of his many jobs was driving him the hardest. My approaches to Serena were alike futile. I have good reason to remember the last one, which took place on my front porch one Sunday morning. “We’re bound to take keer o’ the Madison folks when they come out,” she said, in response to a tentative protest from me. “The Merlins used to live back there, an’ so did all o’ my folks.” “But Len isn’t the only Merlin around here.” “He’s the one they think the most of anyhow,” she returned proudly. “They’re not all from Madison. What about the people from over the ridge?”