The cool maples rustled temptingly before the open kitchen window, and seemed to mock the busy worker within. Flies buzzed at the screen, door, and at intervals found entrance through sundry gaps in the rusty screening. Inside there was the endless clatter of dishes, the hissing sound of frying meat, and occasionally a sharp exclamation in a nervous, high-pitched voice. The owner of the voice, a woman of about thirty-five, was walking busily around the kitchen. A soiled gingham apron nearly covered a worn gray skirt, and several large safety-pins held her waist together over her flat chest. Premature wrinkles hardened her eyes and mouth. Her hair drawn back over a high, bony forehead, was twisted into an untidy little knot at the back of her head. On each of her cheeks, just below the bone, came and went bright spots of color--the only color about her, for her hair had no glints of light and her apathetic blue eyes seemed absolutely devoid of luster. As she hastened back and forth, opening the oven door, setting the table, inspecting the contents of various kettles steaming on the big stove, she still found time to throw a glance, now and then, out to the rickety porch, where a pale-faced little girl sat in an old red porch-chair. The child's big eyes, startlingly prominent in her wan face, followed the woman, and, when the latter looked at her, a sudden smile would curve the straight little lips. But at times she would look away from the kitchen out beyond to the wheat-fields, gleaming yellow in the August sun--and still farther to the cool green woods, with the hard blue sky above them. Then the child would sigh, and her face would grow wondering and anxious, as she turned back again and smiled at the woman in the kitchen--a curious, wistful, unchildlike smile. On the step beside her lay a worn little home-made crutch. "Here come the men-folks, mother," the child exclaimed suddenly. Her mother came to the door, and shading her eyes with her apron, peered up the dusty lane. Then she went back to the house and hurriedly finished setting the table. The heavy plates and cups were hardly in place on the red-checked cloth before the men came clattering up the walk and up the porch. Most of them had a smile for the pale little girl in the chair, and one had brought her a bunch of red field-poppies, already half withered, in his big hand. The child took them eagerly, laying their vivid petals lovingly against her pale cheek. The rest of the men filed past with a grin or a roughly tender, word--all but the last. He came up the steps, his forehead wrinkled in a scowl evidently habitual, his mouth hard, his eyes deep-set and forbidding. He did not even notice the child, and she shrank back in her chair, her lip trembling, her eyes wide with fear.