Joe came magnanimously to the rescue.
"That's jes the kind o' tantrums my woman goes into, on'y worse," he said. "An' she's allus a heap flightier when she's in the fam'ly way. But I never knowed Judy was given to them fits."
"She hain't," Jerry hastened to assure him. "I never knowed her to take on in sech a way afore. She's run guts many a time, like all the wimmin, an' never made no fuss."
"It grows on 'em," said Joe, ominously.
"Well, I s'pose we better pack it out," said Jerry, turning toward the house. "I hain't a-goin' to bother with the guts. There hain't but three four paound o' lard there at best. The pigs was too young to have much fat on their guts. We'll jes take an' heave it out back o' the shed where the hens kin peck it over."
The last sound Judith heard from the yard as she walked away was Snap fighting viciously with Joe Barnaby's dog, who had dared to approach too near to one of the blood pools.
She climbed the hill to the ridge road and walked and walked and walked. She no longer felt at all tired or sick at her stomach. A sense of burning indignation gave her power and energy. She wanted to keep on walking forever and put a longer and longer distance between herself and all that she had left behind: the hot, foul smelling kitchen with its odious tub of guts in the middle, the tub of filthy clothes, the steaming wash boiler, the screaming, insistent children, the men going smugly about with cheeks reddened by the frosty air, and trying to foist upon her the only part of the job that was tedious and hateful. The more she thought about it, the more redly her own cheeks burned with hot anger. She felt as if she could walk to the end of the world.
Her eyes, instinctively reaching out for freedom, sought the long view that sweeps from the top of the ridge to the horizon. It lay bleak and bare under a gray winter sky. Its bareness and monotony of tone made it more far-reaching than in summer. It seemed endless, as she imagined the ocean might be. Out of its calm and magnitude a sense of peace welled up and gradually enfolded her. Her step slackened into a measured, meditative pace. She half forgot the things that she had fled from and in a little while felt almost happy with the happiness that comes of peace and solitude and wide spaces. It was more than three years since she had been by herself in the open country. It was like meeting with an old lover who has not lost his power to charm. The cold air smelled good in her nostrils. She breathed deep and rested her eyes with a sense of quietness and calm on the long, dun stretches of winter fields.
Then it came upon her again quite suddenly. She felt that she had neither the courage nor the strength to go through with it all again, and so soon after the last time. Her flesh cringed at the thought and her spirit faltered. And when the child was born it was only the beginning. She loathed the thought of having to bring up another baby. The women who liked caring for babies could call her unnatural if they liked. She wanted to be unnatural. She was glad she was unnatural. Their nature was not her nature and she was glad of it.
She felt suddenly tired and sat down on a stone under a maple tree, her elbows propped upon her knees and her chin in her hands. A heavy cloak of misery hung about her its cold and clammy folds. The thought of her own utter helplessness against her fate settled upon her like the weight of something dead. For a long time she sat looking out over the winter landscape and seeing nothing. Her gaze was turned inward upon her own horror and despair.