The afternoon wore away slowly. Little Meg slept on her cot upstairs, her cheeks hot and damp, her arms flung wide in the weariness of childhood. Jane sewed steadily at a heap of burlap grain bags, until the sun went down in a riot of yellow and crimson behind the trees. Jane put away her sewing, gently woke Meg, and prepared to go downstairs to get supper ready. She stopped to look at the sunset before she went down. Along the road beyond came the rattle of wheels; a buggy passed in which sat a woman in solitary state. A striped silk dress enveloped her ample person, a hat with nodding red roses and a broad white brim shaded a pair of stupid, comfortable eyes, and cast its shadow over a mouth that fairly sagged with good humor and good living. Her fat hands, lying idly in her lap and holding the reins loosely, were pulled back and forth by the jogging brown horse. Jane recognized in the woman Mrs. Petersen, her nearest neighbor, and half hungrily surmised that she was returning home from a meeting of the "Tuesday Social Club." The buggy leisurely passed the house and disappeared along the dusty lane. Suddenly, in one rush of emotion, the whole barrenness of Jane's lot came over her. She thought of the long days filled with unceasing labor--the dull, gray days that stretched endlessly behind her and yet more endlessly before her. Her life seemed one wearying round of dish-washing and cooking, of going to bed utterly worn out and of rising next morning just as tired as she had been the night before. She felt a terrible grudge rise in her against her husband--and she allowed this grudge now to fill her soul completely, instead of crushing out such feelings as she had hitherto done. Why had he never helped her to have a good time as other women had? Why had he forgotten that she was a woman and fond of dainty things? She thought of the stern young fellow who had courted her when she was a girl--so very long ago that was. And how she had married him, and how proud she had been of him, and how she had boasted of his thrift to all her neighbors. And then she remembered how sternness which she admired in the youth had changed into surliness in the man; how gradually--little by little--she had lost hope--she who had hoped for so much and had had to little given her. On her, and on her alone, the brunt of all his displeasure and of all his wrath had fallen.