"She'll just have to get used to us, Sarah," Stanley said. "She'll have to get used to the way we talk around here." "Ain't we going to eat sometime today?" Gus asked. "I thought I heard the dinner bell." "There, the duck's just done," said Sarah. She slipped it deftly onto the willow-ware platter. "Duck on a Saturday?" asked Stud with mild surprise. He viewed the sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, the great bowl of gravy, baked apples, bread-and-butter pickles, the pile of hot homemade bread in thick slices, the apple and gooseberry pies and large graniteware pot of coffee with something like lust. "Duck on a week-day?" "You know Peter came home today. He.... Oh, Stanley, he's quit school! He said he couldn't stand it another day." "And so we kill the fatted calf," said Stanley quietly. "Well, why doesn't he come to dinner? What's keeping him?" "He's upstairs changing into his overalls. You might as well begin." She stopped half way between the stove and table as Stud began the blessing. She cast her eyes down as the words ran on.... "God is great and God is good, and we thank Him for this food...." She saw the wide pine boards of the kitchen, worn white and smooth from years of scrubbing. Then she shut her eyes and said a little prayer of her own for Peter and for Stanley Brailsford. 4 Something was troubling young Peter Brailsford, something he couldn't quite get at or understand. He wasn't at all certain why he had run away from school in Brailsford Junction, or why he had come home instead of hooking a freight for Chicago as he had originally planned. He hated school, and the farm, and most of all himself. He hated all the girls in the world. He was shy in the presence of his father, and sometimes felt a flare of impatience, almost dislike for the older man. He had left the dinner table quietly, slipped on a sweater patched at the elbows, glad to be away from the hired man's teasing, from his mother's over-solicitous love. He strode across the lawn, leaped the fence, and started up the lane to look for the ponies, wondering in his mind who this new girl could be, thinking of the hot, angry scene in the Principal's office when he had announced that he was quitting, remembering how he had thrown his books into the creek, and jumped on his new red motorcycle, wild to be feeling the wind in his hair. But even the thought of that happy, rebellious ride on his fine fast motorcycle with its shining nickel headlight and bright red mudguards was not enough to keep his mind from running hot with the vague injustices of the world. He kicked viciously at the tall dandelions and convenient lumps of dirt. Yet he could not have told precisely what it was that angered him, nor why the great peaceful spring had not caught him up as it had the rest of the world to warm his blood. He'd show them! He'd show everybody! All the stuck-up town kids with their smart ways, all the girls, Stanley, his mother, Gus, everybody!