Her father was standing between her and the door. He stood aside. “Go to bed now. But be quiet. Your Aunt Nancy is there.” “Aunt Nancy?” “Laban came, but he went back to the Cross Roads, and she's over for the night with the baby.” “The baby? Oh, I'll be careful!” A joy came into her voice, and the strain left it in something like a laugh. Early in the morning she crept down the ladder from the loft; her father had looped his cot up against the cabin wall and gone out. Nancy was sitting up in the bed she had made for herself on the floor, coiling a rope of her black hair into a knot at her neck. The baby lay cooing and kicking in her lap. The morning air came in fresh and sweet at the open door. “Oh, Aunt Nancy, may I take her?” “Yes; I'll get the breakfast. Your father'll be hungry; he's been up a good while, I reckon.” “I'll make the fire first, and then I'll take the baby.” The girl uncovered the embers on the hearth and blew them into life; then she ran out into the cornfield, and gathered her apron full of the milky ears, and grated them for the cakes which her aunt molded to fry for breakfast. She took the baby and washed its hands and face, talking and laughing with it. “You talk to it a sight more than you do to anybody else, Jane,” the mother said. “Don't put anything but its little shimmy on; it's goin' to be another hot day.” “I believe,” the girl said, “I'll get some water in the tub, and wash her all over. There'll be time enough.” “It'd be a good thing, I reckon. But you mustn't forget your milkin'. I dunno what _our_ cow'd do this morning if it wasn't for Joey. But he'll milk her, him and Benny Hingston, between them, somehow. Benny stayed with him last night.” “I did forget the milking,” the girl said, putting the baby's little chemise on. “But I'll do it now. Sissy will have to wait till after breakfast for her washing.” She got the tin bucket from where it blazed a-tilt in the sun beside the back door of the cabin, and took her deep bonnet from its peg. She did not ask why the boys slept alone in the cabin, but her aunt felt that she must explain. “Laban's got work for the whole fall at the Cross Roads. He went straight back last night. I come here.” She had got through without telling the lie which she feared she must. “I'm goin' home after breakfast.” Jane asked nothing further, but called from the open door, “Sukey, Sukey! Suk, Suk, Suk!” A plaintive lowing responded; then the snapping sound of a cow's eager hoofs; the hoarse drumming of the milk in the bucket followed, subduing itself to the soft final murmur of the strippings in the foam. Jane carried the milk to the spring house before she reappeared in the cabin with a cup of it for the baby. “It's so good for her to have it warm from the cow,” she said, as she tilted the tin for the last drop on the little one's lips. “I wish you'd leave her here with me, Aunt Nancy.”