They both liked the child well enough and were inclined to spoil him with petting and teasing when he was good. But when he was bad they guarded jealously their sacred right as a childless couple to peace and freedom from disturbance. Hat was sometimes heard to mutter something under her breath about "Other folks' snotty-nosed brats," and Luke looked at the child with little cold eyes full of dislike and annoyance.
Mercifully the days were short. By half past four it was too dark to see to grade and they bundled up the babies and went home.
But Judith's day was not yet over, nor was Jerry's. While he milked and fed the horses and did up the other outside chores, she washed the breakfast dishes, swept and straightened the kitchen, washed out the diapers, washed and fed the children, and got the supper ready. After they had eaten supper she put the children to bed and washed the dishes and strained and put away the milk and set the table for breakfast and fried corn cakes to take with them for lunch the next day; and at last she was through, at least until the nursing baby waked and cried in the night.
The next morning at four o'clock the same thing began all over again.
As they neared the end of the long job, a febrile uneasiness stirred the dull atmosphere of the stripping room. It was the anxiety about the market, the eagerness to get done, and catch the opening price. It was whispered that on account of the war in Europe tobacco was going to bring the biggest price in years. Hat and Luke came early and stayed late. Their fingers flew. They were far ahead of Jerry and Judith, because Judith had to stay home at least one day a week to wash for the children. Jerry fretted at the slowness with which the work went on. Daily the tension of his anxiety grew more strained.
Not only in the stripping rooms, but all over the face of Scott County excitement grew and spread as the time of the opening of the market drew near. The price of tobacco was such an unstable thing that it was always a matter for conjecture. It was not a thing that varied within limits and according to known conditions, like the price of hogs and corn. In its variations the price of Kentucky Burley scorned limits; and the circumstances that controlled it were to the tobacco growers a shrouded mystery. Wherever men met together, there was only one thing talked about: the price that tobacco was going to bring. Each man shook his head sagely and hinted darkly that he had inside information on the subject. In reality they were as babes unborn. Speculators great and small hung about stripping rooms, appraising the tobacco. The growers themselves began to dicker about buying each other's crops. Every man who had a drop of sporting blood in his veins was itching to buy, sell, to take some sort of a chance. Their wives coldly counseled them to sit tight and tend to their own business, which advice made them surreptitiously determined to stake something on the turn of Fortune's wheel.
Before they had finished stripping, Jerry caught a cold which developed into a sort of influenza. He kept on working, miserable with a swollen throat and aching head. Then one morning he was hot with fever and had to stay in bed. He was away from the stripping room for four days.
The day that he went back to work, Judith felt her own throat growing sore. The next day she, too, had to stay in bed. For three days she was unable to get up, and Jerry, who had to stay home and take care of the children, floundered about the kitchen with the clumsiness and helplessness possible only in a man who has been brought up by a devoted mother in complete ignorance of every domestic detail.
When on the fourth morning, weak and shaky in the knees, she got up and went out to the kitchen, she found everything in a dreadful mess. The floor showed no appearance of having been swept since she went to bed. The stove was covered with ashes, grease, and the charred remains of something that had boiled over. Dirty dishes and dishes with little dabs of this and that in them were to be found in the most unexpected places. The children's clothes were unspeakably dirty; and the few things that Jerry had tried to wash were of a pale drab color. The slop bucket was a thing of horror. Everything she touched felt sticky, greasy, or slimy. The room smelt of burnt grease, sour milk, and unwashed diapers. Disgust and anger rose in her.
"Seems like you might 'a' tried to keep the place a little better'n a hogpen while I was in bed," she snapped, wiping the top of the stove vigorously with a rag. "Anybody'd think you'd tried to see how much dirt you could make, let alone clean anything."