As the days passed, Judith began to notice that other things besides the tobacco had a queer, unnatural, slightly nauseating smell. She supposed at first that she had eaten something that had disagreed with her and that the effect would pass off in a day or so. The trouble, however, grew worse instead of better. It came on so slowly, so subtly and insidiously, that she was in its grip before she fully realized that there had been a change. She thought that the first time that she had noticed anything unusual in her feelings was the day at the tobacco barn. But she could not be sure. As she looked back she imagined that she had felt other queer sensations even before that. The beginnings of the strange disease were shrouded in mystery.
Some canned salmon that they had for dinner a few days after the visit to the tobacco barn did not taste good at all. Judith could not understand why. She had always loved canned salmon. It was a store delicacy rarely indulged in and hence much relished by the rural population of Scott County.
"What's wrong with this here salmon, Jerry?" she asked, turning it over listlessly with her fork. "It hain't spiled, an' yet it don't taste good, nohaow."
"Tastes good to me," said Jerry. "I cud eat a barrel of it. Gimme yours if you hain't a-goin' to eat it."
She gave him what was left on her plate and he ate it greedily and finished the can.
"I'm afraid you've worked too hard in the field this summer, Judy," he said anxiously. "I hadn't otta let you."
"I don't hardly think it's that," she answered languidly. There was no trace left of her usual animation. She seemed a different person.
As day after day passed and she got no better, she began to realize that a great change had taken place in herself and in the world about her. Nothing seemed at all the same. The fields and lanes, the dooryard, and particularly the house, were full of lurking, insidious stenches that attacked her on every hand and turned her stomach. Everything that she looked at seemed to have something ugly and repulsive about it. The very morning glories and nasturtiums were gaudy and tiresome and the smell of the nasturtiums sickened her. She particularly loathed the sights and smells of the kitchen and fled from them as often as she could. The odor of frying fat, of burning wood, or of beans boiling on the stove sent her reeling to the outside. There she gulped great draughts of the pure air, and as she grew calmer, breathed long and deep until her nausea had subsided. She found that she suffered much less when out of doors and would have stayed there all the time if she had not had to cook for Jerry. She did it as long as she could hold out. But sometimes it was too much for her, and she had to lie down in the bedroom and let Jerry find himself something to eat as best he could.
She detested the kitchen. The oilcloth-covered table, the blue dishes formerly so much prized, the coffee pot, and the big white water pitcher were objects of loathing to her. She hated the sight of the calendars and little pictures that she had tacked on the walls. There was one picture that particularly irritated her, though she could not have told why. It was a still life representing dead grouse and partridges lying on a table. One day she took the picture down from the wall and stuffed it into the stove, getting at least a momentary feeling of satisfaction from hearing it crackle up the stovepipe.
There was one dish that seemed to her especially odious, a berry bowl that Lizzie May had given her as a wedding present. It was made of imitation Tiffany glass, and she had thought it lovely until this strange malady had seized upon her. Now she could not bear to look at the crude bronze and green and purple lights that it cast at her. It seemed an evil and poisonous thing. She poked it into the bottom of one of the bureau drawers and covered it up with sheets and pillow slips.