His lips seemed always prepared for speech, he seemed always about to speak or to have just spoken, and he talked to everybody as if they knew all he meant. “He’s a smart man underneath it all, as smart as ever I saw in life, and it’s his book-sense, I reckon, makes him so he seems different,” Thad said. Beyond, going far, vaguely merged with outlying farms, were vague names, Bose Hines, Farley Penn, and Washington Tandy, names gathered back into the fields and distances. This was the list of the valley as it reached upward toward the farms and frayed into the hills. * * * * * The tenth week she stayed at Alfred Kirk’s place and rode back and forth morning and evening with Susan and Sallie in the buckboard behind the large-boned old horse, and the eleventh week she stayed at Si Weakley’s and rode with Susan and Sallie again. “Next week and you’ll get to know Rowena,” Sallie promised her, offering Rowena with pride. The twelfth week brought her to the top of the valley. The house at West’s place stood sharply defined at the head of the rise of land, but lying away to the south were rolling levels of fields that were of one elevation. The grassy yard before the house was without a path although feet walked there freely and the front door was opened for use. There was a square porch before the house with pillars above and below, the wood of the pillars white against the dull red brick wall. A pet goose came to the doorstep and begged for attention. There were only two rooms above-stairs, a diminished house that belied the spacious doorway. There were no boys in the household and it was Susan who fed the old nag and carried in the water. It was the busy season with the farmers, and all went early to bed, Lucian West rising stiffly from his chair after supper, drawing himself up slowly as his limbs cried out their protest at the fields; but on his feet he walked away briskly, making no compromises with his hurts. Neighbors came to borrow tools or to beg seeds or plants, or to grind tools at the stone. Si Weakley’s oldest boy came to talk with Rowena a little before he rested for the night. Lucian West and the girls called the mother by some name which had been kept from Rowena’s first prattlings, “Meedee,” or “Midi”—they could not say how it should be spelled. Then Theodosia asked leave to stay at the farm during the summer, boarding, for she had saved the money she had earned, and their consent pleased the small child, Sallie, very well. Lucian West proposed that her bed be made on the upper porch. “Couldn’t you, Midi? I’ve heard it said it’s a prime thing to sleep out for a body that’s been out of health for a spell.”