On the back porch her mother was drying apples, for the apple crop had been good, and the cellar was already stored with russets and winesaps.
"We ought to have dried apples enough to last us till next year," Mrs. Oakley remarked, while she wiped the discoloured blade of the knife on her apron. "The whole time I was slicing these apples, I couldn't help thinking how partial your father was to dried fruit, and last fall there were hardly any apples fit to keep." Raising her hand to her eyes, she squinted in the direction from which her daughter had come. "I can't make out who that is running across the cornfield, but whoever it is, he's in a mighty big hurry."
Dorinda followed her gaze. "It's Rufus. He looks as if something were after him."
Mrs. Oakley's face was twisted into what was called her "neuralgic look." "He promised me to mend that churn before night," she said in a dissatisfied tone. "But I haven't laid eyes on him since dinner time. He goes too much in bad company. I haven't got a particle of use for Ike Pryde and those two Kittery boys over by Plumtree."
Dorinda nodded. "I'm glad he is going away. The sooner, the better."
"I reckon he has just recollected the churn." Mrs. Oakley's tone was without conviction, and she added presently, "He certainly does look scared, doesn't he?"
"I wonder what could have frightened him?" As the boy drew nearer, Dorinda saw that he was panting for breath and that his usually florid face was blanched to a leaden pallor. "What on earth has happened, Rufus?" she called sharply.
He waved angrily to her to be silent. His palmetto hat was in his hand, and when he reached the porch, he hurled it through the open door into the hall. Though his breath came in gasps as if he were stifling for air, he picked up a hammer from one of the benches, and without stopping to rest, bent over the broken churn at the side of the step.
"What on earth has happened, Rufus?" Dorinda asked again. She saw that her mother was trembling with apprehension, and the sight exasperated her against Rufus.
"You ought to have let me go away last spring," the boy replied in a truculent tone. He lifted the hammer above his head and, still wheezing from his race, drove a nail crookedly into the bottom of the churn. His hand trembled, and Dorinda noticed that the swinging blow fell unevenly.