Then the agent laughed and looked at the mother as though to laugh kindly with her over this lad of hers, and the woman could not but smile, and she handed him a bowl of tea she had poured out in common courtesy as to any passing guest. And being so near his laughing eyes she could not but look into them, and there was that great, greedy, starving heart of hers showing in her own eyes without her knowledge that it did. The man stared at her and scented her heat and he turned hot and grave and when he took the bowl he touched his hand to hers as though not knowing her hand was there. But the woman felt the touch and caught its meaning in her blood like flame. Then she turned herself away shamed and would not hear what her own heart said. No, she busied herself with the grain and while she did it she grew suddenly afraid of her own self and she said to the lad in a low voice, “Run to our cousin and ask him to come hither and help me,” and to her heart she said, to still its wildness, “If he is here--if our good cousin is here--” But the lad was proud and wilful and he argued, “I am here, mother, and I will help you. What other do you need? See, I am here!” Then the agent laughed loudly and slapped his thick thigh and he took secret advantage of the innocent lad and he cried, “So you are, my lad, and true enough your mother needs no other man!” Then the lad grew the more bold being so encouraged and when his mother said again, half faintly, “It would be better if our cousin were here,” the boy caught the faintness and he cried, “No, I will not call him, mother! I am man enough!” and he took up the scales and strutted to fill the measure with the grain and the woman laughed uneasily and let him be, and the truth was there was something in her, too, that pulled at her to let him be. When the grain was measured out and she had made a measure full again to give the agent for himself, that agent put it from him in a lordly way and he smoothed his long straight upper lip and looking ardently into the woman’s face--for who was there save these children and that old woman nodding in her sleep under the eaves by the door?--he said, “No, I will not have it! You are a lone woman now and your man gone from home and all this is your own labor. I will take no more of it than my landlord must have, or blame me if he does not. I will take no fee from you, goodwife.” Then was the woman suddenly afraid in the midst of the sweet sick heat that was upon her and she grew confused and pressed the fee upon him. But he would not have it. He pushed the measure away, his hand on hers while he did, and at last when he took the measure from her he poured the grain back into the basket where she kept it stored, and he would not have it.