Page:Weeds (1923).pdf/257

 All day long for days together, as long as the cold spell lasted, the slop bucket stood frozen solid in the corner, anchored to the floor by a surrounding island of ice. When at last the thaw came and the ice melted, the leaky bucket, its bottom sprung outward, teetered unsteadily and slowly dribbled its dirty contents.

While the cold spell lasted Judith kept keyed up, energetic and irascible. With the thaw she relaxed into an exhausted torpor. As she wearily heaved out the contents of the greasy slop bucket and washed up the floor under it she sighed and her eyelids fell together asking for sleep.

There were war prices for tobacco that year. They ran as high as forty cents a pound. But the summer had been a dry one and the tobacco was light and of poor quality. Much of it, too, had been nipped by an early frost. Jerry thought himself lucky to get a check for two hundred and thirty-six dollars. Out of this he had to pay forty-seven dollars for hired help.

Guss Dibble, whose wife had a new baby, traded his crop for a cow, and considered that he was doing well.

The winter was a constantly recurring round of thaws and cold spells. It lasted far into March. It seemed as if it would never end. At last the change came all of a sudden and it was summer again.