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 natured under the effects of alcohol. As she caught his glowering eye the smoldering sense of injury that she had been nursing all afternoon flared into hate and fury. If it came to a test of ugliness she could be more than his match, she told herself and her lips set together in grim lines.

Jerry saw the sinister setting of her mouth, and his own face darkened into a black scowl.

Annie had fallen asleep, and she slipped off the child's shoes and outer clothing and carried her into the other room. When she came back the kitchen was almost dark. Jerry still sat by the stove, his head sunk on his breast.

"Air you a-goin' to do the milkin' to-night?" she asked in a dry, dead voice.

"No, I hain't."

She threw on an old cap and jacket, took up the milk bucket with an emphatic rattle and bang and went out, slamming the door so that the house shook.

When she came in again the room was so dark that she could hardly see the outlines of things. The boys had dropped asleep on the old sofa behind the stove. The fire had gone low and the room was chilly. Jerry still sat by the stove, his head sunk lower on his breast.

She lit the lamp, strained the milk and mixed the corn cake batter, then came by the stove to make up the fire. He bulked obstinately between her and the woodbox. For a minute tense with their mutual aversion she stood waiting for him to move.

"Air you a-goin' to move or hain't you?" she asked at last in the same dry, dead voice.

He glanced up at her with a hateful leer, then dropped his head again to his breast.

"I hain't."

For another moment she stood eyeing him with a look of exasperation mingled with cold despisal. Then red fury burst in her and she grasped the handle of the stove lifter.

"You git out o' that chair, you damn filthy haound. Hain't it enough that I gotta spend the hull day scrapin' greasy burnt pans an' puttin' up with them pesterin' young uns, 'ithout havin'