Tira carried the baby into the front room and sat down by the window, still holding him. She pushed her chair back until the curtain hid her and, through the narrow strip between curtain and casing, kept her eyes on Tenney. For several minutes after Martin had driven away, he stood there, still as a tree. Then the tree came alive. Tenney moved back to the left, where the fence ran between field and pasture, and she lost him. But she could not hear his axe. In her anxiety she strained the child against her until he struggled and gave a fitful cry. She did not heed the cry. This, her instinct told her, was the only safe place for him on earth: his mother's arms.
All through the morning she sat there, looking now and then from the window, and still holding the child. When the clock struck eleven, the sound awoke her. If she was to get dinner, she must be about it. Was she to get dinner? Or was she to assume that this day marked the settlement of the long account? The house itself, still in its morning disorder, told her the moment had come. The house itself, it seemed to whisper, could not possibly go on listening to the things it had listened to through the winter or holding itself against the horror of the more horrible silence. Who would think of eating on the verge of this last inevitable settlement? And what would the settlement be? What was there—she thought over the enemies she had feared. The crutch: that was gone. She had made sure of that. The gun: but if it were here she doubted whether Tenney would dare even look at it again, remembering that night when he washed at the invisible stain on his hands. A quarter of an hour had gone in these imaginings, and then she did get up, went into the kitchen, built her fire, and set the table. But as she moved about the room, she carried the baby with her, working awkwardly against his weight and putting him down for a minute only at a time and snatching him up again at an unexpected sound. Once a robin called just outside the window, a bold bright note; it might have been the vagabond robin from Raven's orchard who sang about nests but seemed never to break off singing long enough to find a straw for one. She caught up the child from the couch and stood breathless, listening. It seemed as if the robin knew, and somehow, like Martin, felt like laughing at her.
Tenney was there, at a few minutes after twelve, but dinner was not on time. He came in, washed his hands at the sink and glanced about him. The table was set, and Tira, at the stove, the child on her hip, was trying the potatoes. She did not look at him. If he looked strange, it seemed to her she might not be able to go on.
"I ain't dished up," she said. "I'm kinder late."
Tenney spoke immediately and his voice sounded merely quiet, not, she reasoned anxiously, as if he tried to make it so, but just—quiet.
"You ain't washed the breakfast dishes neither. Ain't you feelin' well?"
"Yes," said Tira, "well as common. I left 'em, that's all."
"Oh," said Tenney. "Wanted to git at suthin' else."
She turned and looked at him. Yes, he was different, not paler, nor, as she had seen him, aflame in a livid way, but different.
"Isr'el," she said, "I never knew 'Gene Martin was goin' to stop here. I knew no more'n the dead."