"She's a knowsome girl," he said that night as he lay beside his wife. "She's a knowsome girl. 'Twon't rain to-morrow. There was no rain in they clouds."
VII
The next evening it was, after the first day in the hayfield and while Mr. Peverell in the big barn was sharpening the knives of the mowing machine, that Mary set herself to the task of telling his wife why she wanted to come to the farm.
Hard as she knew it would be, so much the harder it became when alone she found herself watching that sallow face with its sunken and lusterless eyes, the thin, unforgiving line of lip, the chin set square, obediently to turn the other cheek to the smiting hand of Fate.
Mrs. Peverell was knitting.
"A woolly vest," said she--"for the old man, come next winter. Time they leaves be off the apple trees, the wind ain't long afindin' we'd be here top of the hill."
For a while Mary sat in silence counting her stitches--two purl, two plain, two purl, two plain. The needles clicked. The knotted knuckles turned and twisted, catching the light with rhythmic precision. And all the time she kept saying to herself--"Soon he'll come back from the barn and I shan't have said it. Soon he'll come back."
"Did you make all your children's things for them?" she asked with sudden inspiration, striking the note to key her thoughts when she could speak them.
The needles clicked on. The knotted knuckles twisted and turned as though she had never heard. The head was bent, the eyes fastened upon her stitches.
Thinking she had not heard, Mary was about to repeat her question when suddenly she looked. Stone her eyes were, even and gray. Through years, each one of which was notched upon her memory, she looked at Mary across the dim light of their parlor kitchen.