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seemed that winter as if the spring would never come, as if there would never be an end to the arid routine of corn meal mush and coffee for breakfast, corn meal cakes and coffee for dinner, and coffee and corn meal cakes for supper. March dragged its weary length into what seemed more like a year than a month. February had been full of mild, springlike days, days of strengthening sun and greening grass that had cheered the hungry tenant farmers into hopes of an early spring. But March closed down grim and inexorable. Bitter winds blew all day under a cold, gray sky, a dead, frozen sky, all one blank, even tone of pale gray, dreary and disheartening. They dried up the tender grass that had been springing in sheltered places. They whirled the fine dust of dried clay about the barns and houses. They pierced like knife blades through worn-out underwear and sleazy cotton dresses and threadbare jackets and made the doing of barnyard chores a shrinking misery.

There were not many chores. Judith had only her cow to milk and care for and her hens to feed. Often, however, she had wood to chop; for Jerry was busy now with the spring plowing and was not so attentive to the woodpile as he had been during their first year together. When she had finished these chores, she fled back into the house as a woodchuck scuttled to the protection of his hole. The bitter, dust-laden wind seemed to suck the moisture from her skin and from her very bones. She felt as bleak, dry, desolate, and soulless as the landscape. Looking out of the little window at the bare garden patch where she had planted a few onion sets and some seed of lettuce and radishes, and which as yet showed no hint of green, she felt dismal, hungry, and hopeless.

During these last weeks of the winter, she grew daily paler and more listless. It was time for the baby to be born, and