He sat below her with an arm across her slim knees. “I'm going to dig right into the truck patch; there's a parcel of poles cut for the beans. It won't be much the first year; but wait and we'll show people how to live.” He repeated his vision in connection with the present Alderwith holdings. “I wonder will we ever be rich like the senator?” “Certainly,” he answered with calm conviction. “A man couldn't be shiftless with you to do for, Hannah. He'd be obliged to have everything the best.” “It'll take a long while though,” she continued. “We will have to put in some hard licks,” he admitted. “But we are young; we've got a life to do it in.” “A man has, but I don't know about girls. It seems like they get old faster; and then things--silk dresses don't do them any good. How would ma look in fashionable clothes!” “You won't have to wait that long,” he assured her. “Your father has never hurt himself about the place, there's no money in sheep; and as for Hosmer--you know well as me that he is nothing outside of the bank and his own comfort. Store clothes is Hosmer all through.” “I wish you were a little like him there,” Hannah returned. He admitted that this evening he was more untidy than need be. “I just couldn't wait to see you,” he declared; “with our place and--and all so safe and happy.” II The Braley table, spread after the Greenstream custom in the kitchen, was surrounded by Richmond and Calvin--Hosmer had stayed late at the bank--Hannah and Susan, the eldest of the children, prematurely aged and wasted by a perpetual cough, while Lucy Braley moved carelessly between the stove and the table. At rare intervals she was assisted by Hannah, who bore the heavy dishes in a silent but perceptible air of protest. Calvin Stammark liked this; it was a part of her superiority to the other girls of the locality. He made up his mind that she should never lose her present gentility. Whenever he could afford it Hannah must have help in the house. No greater elegance was imaginable. Senator Alderwith, at his dwelling with its broad porch, had two servants--two servants and a bathtub with hot water running right out of a tap. And he Calvin Stammark, would have the same, before Hannah and he were too old to enjoy it. He had eleven hundred dollars now, after buying the land about his house. When the right time came he would invest it in more property--grazing, a few herd of cattle and maybe in timber. Calvin had innumerable schemes for their betterment and success. To all this the sheer fact of Hannah was like the haunting refrain of a song. She was never really out of his planning. He might be sitting on his rooftree squaring the shingling; bargaining with Eli Goss, the stone-cutter; renewing the rock salt for Alderwith's steers; but running through every occupation was the memory of Hannah's pale distracting face, the scarlet thread of the lips she was continually biting, her slender solid body.