When the old man spoke suddenly after a period of quiet a tiny spray of spittle would sometimes fly from his ill-balanced teeth. In rest his thin-lipped mouth bent downward at the corners and imposed its angles upon the lower cheeks. She did not know it then, but his mouth had been closed by sorrow. “By God, Shelley was no jackass,” he said, snapping shut the book. Annie had brought the paper dolls to the doorsill, hinting for play. Theodosia joined her there and began to stand the long, slim ladies in rows against the house, half gravely, half in frolic, wavering between Annie and the men, her grave way belonging to Annie. The hour had been rich and dark with the voices from the poem. Now Annie’s soft child-speech fell high and thin about the matters of the paper images of women and girls, the chirping of some familiar bird. “I wish you-all had brought the fiddle,” Tom said. “I’m just sick for a little fiddle music myself. Tony, you got no call to come down here without you bring along your music. Next time you come you got to play a double quantity just because you forgot this time to fetch it along.” “Too many people sit around and do nothing all day as ’tis,” Miss Doe said. “I recall how you used to play Heart Bowed Down and Lucy Lammermoor. ‘Farewell, farewell my own true love.’ I recall one night ...” “It’s Theodosia plays the fiddle now,” Anthony said. “I give over now to the young hoss. Plays, egad, yes she does. Takes right after it.” Theodosia turned to the paper dolls with grave willingness and preoccupation. Her blood flowed warmly because of the praise, spreading over her like a soft mantle. * * * * * The girls went for a walk with their uncle one bright mid-morning, going to a tobacco barn which stood down in a creek valley beyond two fields. Of the dogs, Blix and Roscoe were allowed, and they ran smelling at the path, quietly humble when they were called. The other dogs were locked into the old apple house, the place where they were kept when they were not wanted running about, where they were seasoned for the hunt. Some abundance within herself would not let Theodosia acquiesce completely to the hour, to any hour or to any experience, as being sufficient. She kept on the way a pleasant sense of her grandfather sitting reading under the pine before the house, knowing a curious joy in his absence and enjoying the walk more intensely in that she enjoyed it for him as well as for herself. The corn in the field was very high, near its maturing. Tom Singleton wondered and delighted in the height of the corn. His pride in the high corn seemed then to touch her vague distrust of pride and delight, and she smiled with him happily, swinging his hand. “Some of it fifteen feet high, Ladybug, if it’s one inch. Have to tear the shock down to pluck it.”