“Ye’re always away,” she went on grumbling. “Folks’ll think ye don’t care nothin’ fer yore own fam’ly. Every whip-stitch ye’re off up into the hills, visitin’ somewhars or other, I don’t know whar. What’s it comin’ to?” Still he made no answer, and she went on upbraiding. “We been married four years, an’ ye act as free as if we’d nuvver been married at all. Don’t yore fam’ly need nothin’ now an’ agin? Is this all a womern’s got to live fer, I want to know? Look what kind of place we got.” “Hit’s all ye come from,” he said at length. “Hit’s all yore people ever knowed, er mine. Why should ary of us expect more?” An even, dull, accepted despair was in his tone. As for her, she cared not so much for philosophy as for the heckling she had held in reserve for him. “Hit’s a lot to offer ary womern, hain’t it?” said she. “Had ye much to offer in exchange?” said he, quietly and bitterly. “We traded fair, the best we knowed, the same sort of trade that’s common. We got married—thar was our children. What more is thar fer ye er em er ary of us in these hills, I’d like to know! Such as I’ve had, ye’ve had.” There was something so stern, so bitter, in his sudden unkind remark that she took another tack. “Hain’t ye tired?” she began, wheedling. She stooped over and pulled back the coverlet, a gaudy, patchwork quilt upon the single bed of the apartment. “Don’t ye want to lay down an’ rest a while?” “No. I’m a-thinkin’.” “What was ye thinkin’ about—me?” “No, I was thinkin’ about the new doctor, an’ what he said to me last week.” She was silent now. The name of the new doctor seemed to be something she had heard before. “Ye talk too much with that new doctor. He puts too many fool ideas in yore haid. We’re married, an’ we got to live like that. How do ye figger any different, I’d like to know? Ye brung me here yore own self—ye knowed what ye wanted when ye come up thar courtin’ me at my daddy’s at the haid of Bull Skin. I come right down here to yore house when I was married. I stood right on this floor here, an’ yore daddy, he married us. Ye know that.” “Yes, I do.” The young man’s face was extremely grave and gray as he spoke. “—An’ yore daddy was a regular ordained preacher.” “What’s the matter with ye, anyways?” she went on querulously. “Ye been a-quarlin’ with yore own people well as me?” “My own daddy jest now ordered me outen his house. I’m nuvver goin’ thar no more.” “Huh! I reckon yore own free-thinkin’ ways druv it on ye.” “He burned my fiddle!” said David Joslin, with sudden resentment. “Ye mought have expected it—goin’ up thar to play a fiddle in a preacher’s house!” “I jest had her strung up for the fust time,” rejoined her husband. “I was a-playin’ ‘Barbara Allen.’ My daddy accused me of bein’ sinful. We’ve got it hard enough livin’ in these hills without being damned when we die.” “Hush, Dave! Be keerful of what ye say.”