"Same thing you're a-doin', I reckon: a-loafin' an' a-idlin' an' a-spendin' what little money I got."
"Yaas, I expect that's about what we're all a-doin'," said Bob, and walked along beside her.
Now and then they saw in the crowd the familiar face of some one from their neighborhood; and Judith was conscious each time of a certain constraint in the look and greeting of these people, which would not have been there if she had been alone. Since her marriage she had begun to learn that a married woman cannot appear in the company of any man other than her husband without "making talk." She looked at the people she knew, from under her heavy eyebrows, with a challenging boldness that was half amusement, half irritation.
In front of the Town Hall they met Jerry, who turned and joined them. She caught the same expression on Jerry's face. This look which had caused her only a vague annoyance when seen on the faces of the neighbors, brought a surge of quick anger, when she saw it sneaking out of Jerry's eyes; and she began to joke and banter with Bob in a hectic way quite unbecoming to a married woman of the tobacco country. Her gaiety sent Jerry into a fit of the sulks; and he walked along beside them silent and glowering. The more he sulked and glowered, the more feverishly Judith laughed and joked. The smell of whiskey, that powerful stimulant of the male propensities, was strong on the breath of both the young men, and was in a great measure responsible for Bob's animation and Jerry's sullenness. Judith, however, was not intoxicated, and did not know enough about the effect of alcohol to make it an excuse for her husband's behavior. Under her levity there lurked a growing spirit of quite sober and very cold appraisal.
When they reached the place where Nip and the cart were waiting, the young horse trader had come back and was busy greasing his wagon and making other preparations for pulling out. He looked at Judith again but not quite so boldly, out of respect for her husband's presence.
Obeying that magnetism which draws people of the same sex together, the three men gathered in a little knot beside the trader's wagon and began to talk about horses, saddles, and guns. Judith went over to the woman, who had spread a gunny sack on the grass and was sitting on it mending one of her little girl's dresses, and they began to talk of babies, of cooking, and patterns for pieced bedquilts.
As the woman prattled scarcely heeded at her side, Judith felt stirring strongly within her a deep exaltation. The break in the deadening monotony of her days had affected her like a strong stimulant and she was keenly alive to things, tasting deliciously the full savor of life. She had forgotten her irritation at Jerry. All her perceptions seemed strangely sharpened. Her eyes took delight in noting niceties of tone and line and color, things for which she had no words but which were becoming with each year of mental growth more pregnant with suggestion.
She was so taken up with the delight of gazing about that she hardly noticed that Joe Barnaby had passed by and beckoned Jerry away, probably for the purpose of some further communion of spirits over the bar. Still less did she observe that after Jerry's departure the two men beside the covered wagon looked several times in her direction and dropped their voices to a very low tone. The trader's wife prattled on.
Suddenly and quite without warning, the whole scene went black before her. Against this blackness certain words stood out bright red. Her ear had caught only these few words; but they made the meaning of the whole sentence just spoken by Bob Crupper quite unmistakable.
When the black melted and she could see again, she felt herself tingling all over as if pricked by a million needles. She looked sidewise at the trader's wife to see if she had heard. The woman was running on about how hard it was to keep children in garters, too busy with her own chatter to notice anything said by anybody else. Judith knew that she was spared this much at least. She got up, made a stammered excuse about something that she had forgotten to buy, and almost ran from the hateful place.