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The sun warmed the shadows and dusted the ploughed land. The smell everywhere was thick with green breathing and sun. But this day had only the shadow-cleanness of promise. The only smell in the air was of cool water.
    “Grammie,” Anna said, “I think I’ll marry a sailor.”

CHAPTER IV
    I n the house, Martha’s hands darted about with quiet skill. She opened her kitchen door and placed the round varnished stone against it. She scalded the churn, and fetched the jug of cream from the cellar. As her arms moved rhythmically at the dash of the churn, spinning it simultaneously with each upward or downward thrust, her thought fed calmly, like an animal grazing.
    It was pleasant to be alone in the house. There was no loneliness when the others were away, but not isolably away, each happy with his own things. It was pleasant to have all the tasks of a new year at the threshold, but none of them clamorous yet.
    She bent to see if the butter had begun to gather. As she straightened, she caught a glimpse of someone’s shadow pass the window. She felt the instant defocus an unidentified movement provokes. She glanced at the clock, almost frowning.There was a step on the porch, and Rachel Gorman came through the door.
    Martha felt the morning sag. She put away the nice feeling of being alone. She didn’t know why she always dreaded to see Rachel come. But somehow when Rachel had left it was hard to go back to the way you’d been thinking before she came. Somehow, though you couldn’t trace it exactly to anything Rachel had said, you’d find yourself rankling about something.
    She glanced at her apron to see if any cream had splashed on it. Rachel was always spotless.
    “Come in, come in,” she called. “Good morning.”
    “Good mornin.”
    Rachel’s thin grey hair was drawn into a tight bun on the top of her head. The enormous black eyes in her skimpy face were deceptively canine-wistful. They could take complete charge of her other features in a second. Caution seemed to limit any smile as soon as it began.
    “Isn’t this some day?” Martha said. “It makes you feel like living. Set down.”
    Rachel sat by the window, where she could keep her eye on the road.
    “Yes,” she said. “But nothin’ll start up if we don’t git a rain. I thought we’d git a shower this mornin, but it didn’t amount to nothin.”
    A picture of the land after a warm rain flashed through Martha’s mind. The warm rain, and then the spilling green of the grass taking all the roughness from the fields. Feeling the freedom of no-coat when you stepped outside. The sun coming through the mist that lifted cleanly from the sides of the immaculate blue mountains, just before dark, and varnishing everything with yellow-green shadow.
    “We’ll likely git enough rain next month,” Rachel said, “when it’s plantin time. We’ll git more’n we want then.”
    When Rachel spoke the picture changed. Martha saw the day of seeding. How often the rain
did
come then; steady at first, then sulking in the damp-breathing clouds, refusing to declare itself. Drops of it would chandelier the trees, hanging sullenly on every twig; and the sodden grass would be slovenly underfoot.
    “Are you all alone?” Rachel said.
    “Yes,” Martha said. “Joseph took the boys back to the camp. I don’t know just where Grammie and Anna are.”
    “That’ll be a long tramp fer David,” Rachel said. “I suppose I’m foolish”—she smiled her beginning-of-a-smile—“but I’d be worried sick, if I was you.”
    “I didn’t want him to go,” Martha said, “but Joseph seemed to think …”
    “I know,” Rachel said. “Men don’t see any danger in anything.”
    It
is
too long a tramp for David, where he isn’t strong, Martha thought. It was a crazy idea. She felt almost angry at Joseph.
    “Did Spurge go on the drive?” she said.
    “Yes,” Rachel said. “Why he always hankers so to git away on that drive, I don’t know. It leaves me all the