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 After the meal was over, the three men sauntered away on manly pursuits, their steps leading them in the direction of the swinging bar door; and Judith was left to gather up the remains of the meal. As she was doing this, she saw the young man who had just traded with Uncle Sam come up and join the party belonging to a covered wagon which had tied up a few yards away. They were evidently his wife and three children; and the five ate dinner together, boiling coffee and frying bacon and eggs over a little gipsy fire of twigs and chips built between two large stones. The young trader seemed to be in high spirits and laughed and played light heartedly with the children. He recognized Judith as the young woman who he had seen standing by while he was trading; and frankly admiring her youthful good looks, he cast several bold glances in her direction, which his wife tactfully pretended not to notice.

After the meal was over, he went away again. Judith, giving herself up to an after dinner feeling of pleasant languor, sat on the grass under the big beech tree and watched the three little girls as they played house with a piece of board for a table and a handful of flat pebbles for dishes. Their mother, a faded, harassed looking woman, who was probably in the late twenties, although she looked much older, gathered up the broken egg shells and threw them on the fire, washed the gray enameled mugs and plates and put them away in the covered wagon. The three little girls were named Curlena, Sabrina, and Aldina. The faded mother, when she had occasion to speak to the children, called them by these names in a way which suggested that she derived pleasure from the sound of the long, euphonious, and unusual appellations.

After dinner lethargy does not last long in the young; and Judith soon grew tired of sitting idly under the tree. She got up, shook out her skirts, felt to make sure that she still had her little purse in her pocket, and started toward the town.

As she passed the covered wagon she paused; for country people do not go by each other without a word of greeting.