The day's work was over; men and boys began to arrive at the Hands place, some carrying lanterns. [26] From early candle lighting till near the turn of the night the house would be full; then the elders, men and women on whose day labor a family must depend, would begin to slip away, except a few old widowers and bachelors who might remain smoking on the steps outside; and a circle of young folks who would be left sitting in the lamplight and fireshine of the main room. Flenton knew of old experience just how the night would go. He longed inexpressibly to be one of those up-sitting young people that he might push his chair close to Callista Gentry's and whisper to her in the privilege of the hour. Yet he was held back by a consideration for his dignity as one of the bereaved. "Miz. Gentry," said Roxy Griever, "will you stay and he'p with the supper--they aim to have a reg'lar meal put on the table at about midnight--settin' up with the dead is mighty wearin'." "I 'low the gals would rather tend to that theirselves," deprecated Octavia, mildly. "I mind how it was when I was a gal. I never did want some old women pesterin' around at sech a time." She cast a swift glance to where Callista sat, her fair head bent, the lamplight upon its bright burden of corn-colored braids, Lance Cleaverage, his hands in his pockets, standing before the girl regarding her, and evidently about to say something. [27] The Widow Griever's look followed Octavia's to the front room in which half-a-dozen couples had paired off, whispering, giggling a bit if the truth must be told, with an occasional undernote of hysteria in the giggles. "That's jest the reason," she announced, straightening up from the hearth where she had been stirring a vast boiler full of very strong coffee. "The gals that lets tham men have their way is foolish. They'll rue the day they done so. Men persons would always have the old folks leave, and the young folks run things to suit theirselves; but I don't believe in sech." On the mental horizon of the Widow Griever there hovered ever a vast, dun, evil-promising cloud known as "tham men." She never alluded to the opposite sex in any way other than collectively, and named them in this manner, which held in it all of reproach. Her father--gentle soul--presented himself to her under the name of Poppy, as somewhat set apart from the raging mass of predatory males addressed more or less openly and directly to destruction. Poppy and a young brother, Sylvanus, though belonging to the vicious sex and thereby under suspicion, were possible; but Lance, the lawless and debonair, was not only one of the enemy--he was Roxy Griever's horrible example. The church-house where "tham men" were kept on the one side so that the gentler half of creation might sit peacefully [28] on the other, was to her thinking the only safe and proper place of public gathering.