“You think your pap knows everything. Your pap, he don’t own the earth.” “I touched Betty Hawthorne one time.” “I laid my eyes on her. That’s as close as ever I got to her.” “I touched her.” “Where’d you touch her?” “I touched her on the leg.” They were singing the game again, the voices blended to a high thin shouting that spread widely under the great trees and out before the creek. Down she came as soft as silk, A rose in her bosom as white as milk. She took off her glove and showed me her ring, Tomorrow, tomorrow the wedding begins. Oh, mercy on me what have I done! I’ve married the father instead of the son. His back’s as crooked as an old tin pan, And they’re all a-laughen at my old man. Theodosia wrote sums on the board and made history questions and outlines or searched out stories to read and made maps with chalk; and felt a slight and very inward jealousy of Betty Hawthorne as holding the interest and affection of the small girls and boys. Betty Hawthorne might wear her blue ribbons and knot up her roan-colored hair for all she cared, and she played a capricious dance tune at the end of the noon hour to state her jealousy of this creature, a careless air barbed with subtle darts that deflected it from its kept rhythm, that jerked it hither and yon under the implied three-four of the measure, her lips smiling. All about the men were planting the corn. All day, looking across the creek from the windows of the schoolhouse, she could see the drills working up and down making exact rows through the broken soil. Everywhere the gardens were being planted, rows of seeds put into the soil in orderly ways to yield them food. “My own hair, it might be called roan-colored too,” she said, “but a dark roan. A rose in her bosom as white as milk is no matter. I’m a dark roan myself....” * * * * * The men were taking a cow through the road toward the slaughter-pen, a fattened heifer to be killed for beef. She came from Burns’s farm at the head of the creek valley. “What does he kill a heifer for?” one asked at the door of the store. “What for does he kill a heifer?” “No good, she is. Wouldn’t calve.”