An observer seeing Lucretia Burns as she rose from the cow's side, and taking her pails of foaming milk staggered toward the gate, would have been made weak with sympathetic pain. The two pails hung from her lean arms, her bare feet slipped on the filthy ground, her greasy and faded calico dress showed her tired, swollen ankles, and the mosquitoes swarmed mercilessly on her neck and bedded themselves in her colorless hair. The children were quarrelling at the well and the sound of blows could be heard. Calves were querulously calling for their milk, and little turkeys lost in the tangle of grass were piping plaintively. The sun just setting struck through a long, low rift like a boy peeping beneath the eaves of a huge roof. Its light brought out Lucretia's face as she leaned her sallow forehead on the top bar of the gate and looked towards the west. It was a pitifully worn, almost tragic face,--long, thin, sallow, hollow-eyed. The mouth had long since lost the power to shape itself into a kiss, and had a droop at the corners which seemed to announce a breaking down at any moment into a despairing wail. The collarless neck and sharp shoulders showed painfully. She felt vaguely that the night was beautiful, the setting sun, the noise of frogs, the nocturnal insects beginning to pipe--all in some way called her girlhood back to her, though there was little in her girlhood to give her pleasure. Her large gray eyes (her only interesting feature) grew round, deep, and wistful as she saw the illimitable craggy clouds grow crimson, roll slowly up, and fire at the top. A childish scream recalled her. "Oh my soul!" she half groaned, half swore, as she lifted her milk and hurried to the well. Arriving there, she cuffed the children right and left with all her remaining strength, saying in justification:-- "My soul! can't you--you young 'uns give me a minute's peace? Land knows, I'm almost gone up--washin' an' milkin' six cows, and tendin' you and cookin' f'r _him_, ought'o be enough f'r one day! Sadie, you let him drink now'r I'll slap your head off, you hateful thing! Why can't you behave, when you know I'm jest about dead." She was weeping now, with nervous weakness. "Where's y'r pa?" she asked after a moment, wiping her eyes with her apron. One of the group, the one cuffed last, sniffled out, in rage and grief:-- "He's in the cornfield,--where'd ye s'pose he was?" "Good land! why don't the man work all night? Sile, you put that dipper in that milk agin, an' I'll whack you till your head'll swim! Sadie, le' go Pet, an' go 'n get them turkeys out of the grass 'fore it gits dark! Bob, you go tell y'r dad if he wants the rest o' them cows milked, he's got 'o do it himself. I jest can't, and what's more I _won't_," she ended rebelliously.