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 ground. Endlessly and in a heavy, sodden silence they all stripped and stripped and stripped.

Every three hours or so, when the baby cried, she stopped to nurse him. She was glad of this chance to sit down, for her feet and ankles ached from the strain of long standing. Sometimes when she sat beside the stove nursing the baby she dozed and dreamed, wakened with a start, dozed, and dreamed again.

If the weather was not too bad Billy was wrapped up and put outside to play. But he did not stay there long; he soon came back hungry for company. Inside he got into people's way and was often fretful and badgering. Sometimes he annoyed Luke and Hat, and they were not slow to show it. As a general thing they treated him kindly enough, rallied and teased him, and asked him if he didn't want to come and live with them. Sometimes Hat even brought him a little paper of sugared popcorn or a top or marble that she had found lying about. Luke made him a trumpet out of a goat's horn and painstakingly taught him how to blow it. It gave out a musical, melancholy sound far reaching and resonant.

They both liked the child well enough and were inclined to spoil him with petting and teasing when he was good. But when he was bad they guarded jealously their sacred right as a childless couple to peace and freedom from disturbance. Hat was sometimes heard to mutter something under her breath about "Other folks' snotty-nosed brats," and Luke looked at the child with little cold eyes full of dislike and annoyance.

Mercifully the days were short. By half past four it was too dark to see to grade and they bundled up the babies and went home.

But Judith's day was not yet over, nor was Jerry's. While he milked and fed the horses and did up the other outside chores, she washed the breakfast dishes, swept and straightened the kitchen, washed out the diapers, washed and fed the children, and got the supper ready. After they had eaten supper she put the children to bed and washed the dishes and strained and put away the milk and set the table for breakfast and fried corn cakes to take with them for lunch the next day;