Page:Weeds (1923).pdf/148

 Judith could not understand why. She had always loved canned salmon. It was a store delicacy rarely indulged in and hence much relished by the rural population of Scott County.

"What's wrong with this here salmon, Jerry?" she asked, turning it over listlessly with her fork. "It hain't spiled, an' yet it don't taste good, nohaow."

"Tastes good to me," said Jerry. "I cud eat a barrel of it. Gimme yours if you hain't a-goin' to eat it."

She gave him what was left on her plate and he ate it greedily and finished the can.

"I'm afraid you've worked too hard in the field this summer, Judy," he said anxiously. "I hadn't otta let you."

"I don't hardly think it's that," she answered languidly. There was no trace left of her usual animation. She seemed a different person.

As day after day passed and she got no better, she began to realize that a great change had taken place in herself and in the world about her. Nothing seemed at all the same. The fields and lanes, the dooryard, and particularly the house, were full of lurking, insidious stenches that attacked her on every hand and turned her stomach. Everything that she looked at seemed to have something ugly and repulsive about it. The very morning glories and nasturtiums were gaudy and tiresome and the smell of the nasturtiums sickened her. She particularly loathed the sights and smells of the kitchen and fled from them as often as she could. The odor of frying fat, of burning wood, or of beans boiling on the stove sent her reeling to the outside. There she gulped great draughts of the pure air, and as she grew calmer, breathed long and deep until her nausea had subsided. She found that she suffered much less when out of doors and would have stayed there all the time if she had not had to cook for Jerry. She did it as long as she could hold out. But sometimes it was too much for her, and she had to lie down in the bedroom and let Jerry find himself something to eat as best he could.

She detested the kitchen. The oilcloth-covered table, the blue dishes formerly so much prized, the coffee pot, and the