The place was run by a family of three ... there was Mister Brown, the man, a huge-built, blotch-faced, retired stone-mason, his meagre little wife, Mrs. Brown, and their grass-widow daughter, Flora.... Flora did but little work, except to lean familiarly and with an air of unspoken intimacy, over the tables of the men, as she slouched up with their food ... and she liked to sit outside in the back yard when there was sunshine ... in the hammock for more comfort ... shelling peas or languidly peeling potatoes. Flora's vibrant, little, wasplike mother whose nose was so sharp and red that it made me think of Paul's ferret--she bustled and buzzed about, doing most of the work. * * * * * Looking out from our back window, I could see Flora lolling, and I would read or write a little and then the unrest would become too strong and I would go down to her. Soon two potato knives would be working. "Come and sit by me in the hammock." I liked that invitation ... she was plump to heaviness and sitting in the hammock crushed us pleasantly together. This almost daily propinquity goaded my adolescent hunger into an infatuation for her,--I thought I was in love with her,--though I never quite reconciled myself to the cowlikeness with which she chewed gum. She was as free and frank of herself as I was curious and timid. "Johnnie, what small feet and little hands you have ... you're a regular aristocrat." * * * * * A pause. I give her a poem written to her. She reads it, letting her knife stick in a half-peeled potato. She looks up at me out of heavy-lidded eyes. * * * * * "I believe you're falling in love with me." I trembled, answered nothing, was silent. "Kiss me!" Seeing me so a-tremble, she obeyed her own injunction. With slow deliberation she crushed her lips, full and voluptuous, into mine. The warmth of them seemed to catch hold of something deep down in me, and, with exquisite painfulness, draw it out. Blinded with emotion, I clutched close to her. She laughed. I put one hand over her full breast as infants do. She pushed me back. "There, that's enough for one day--a promise of sweets to come!" and she laughed again, with a hearty purr like a cat that has a mouse at its mercy. She rose and carried in the pan of potatoes we had just finished peeling. And I saw her sturdy, but not unshapely ankles going from me as she went up the steps from the yard, her legs gleaming white through her half-silk hose (that were always coming down, and that she was always twisting up, just under her knees, before my abashed eyes). She wore shoes much too little for her plump feet ... and, when not abroad, let them yawn open unbuttoned. And her plump body was alive and bursting through her careless, half-fastened clothes. She sang with a deep sultriness of voice as she walked away with the pan of potatoes. * * * * *