Then he took a package from his coat pocket and said that it was a snack of lunch his wife always wrapped up for him, that he never could tell where he would be for his dinner and she always tied him up a little snack to be on the safe side.
“I’m a mind to eat it now, to get shed of it,” he said. “I’ll be in Spring Valley to dinner, that I well see, and I always eat my dinner with Doc Bradley when I pass. I’m a mind to eat the bite I got here now, and maybe you’ll have a bite along with me, just to keep me company.”
He unrolled a paper from about the food and offered her one of the sandwiches in his hands. Then the juices of her vitals leaped like hungry serpents at the sight of the food and her hand reached for it, afraid it might be withdrawn, her hand trembling. She took the food out of his hand, her eyes smiling, her mind joyous, the serpent of her maw beating with anticipation, reaching forward with craving, and she knew that her way was strange as she took the bread into her hand, that even he, unobserving and eager to talk, one of his hands on the steering-wheel of the wagon, knew that her manner was biased, deflected from the ways of women. In her fingers the food was seen to be pieces of well-baked bread buttered richly, between the pieces bits of tender meat delicately salted, the flesh of cattle made ready for food. At the first moment a sickness arose as she swallowed, but she ate slowly, a rich repast, two pieces of buttered bread and the meat. When she had fed she drowsed slightly, and she let the morning spend itself as it would, let it run past her unhindered, noted but unguided.
Some people were standing in an old doorway talking together, and they shook their heads when the peddler called out to them, sufficient in themselves, joyous over some departure, waving hands as two went down a path. At a small gate beside a bridge a woman was driving a great turkey-gobbler, guiding it skilfully into the small entry, and her passing set a bright glow of color against the brown of the earth and the faint yellow that lay over the bushes, her shawl dull blue plaided with gray. Some children loitered at the side of the road making a seesaw of a fallen board and two larger girls came idly down the road under the lacery of stripped boughs, a renewed token that school did not keep. Her joy lasted and the journey came to an end. The truck went slowly down the village road between the small houses, scattering the hens from its path, calling the men to the door of the blacksmith’s shop, curving its path to the curving way.
SIX
From her window she could see that the houses in the hamlet were close together, huddled about the blacksmith’s shop and the store. The noises of the lane were near at hand, the voices intimate. She was in an upper chamber in Bradley’s house to rest, for she had asked for two weeks’ time. She had been sick, she said, but she was now recovering. In two weeks she would begin to teach the children. The doctor said finally:
“I expect your aunt, old Miss Doe, lives right close and stingy now. She’s half starved you maybe.”
“I’ve been sick. But I’ll be well now,” she said.