“We only drink one cup of coffee at a meal here,” explained Isom, a rebuke in his words for the extravagance of those whose loose habits carried them beyond that abstemious limit.
“All right; I guess I can make out on that,” said Joe.
There was a pitcher of water at his hand, upon which he drew heavily, with the entire good-will and approbation of Isom. Then he took his hat from the floor at his feet and went out, leaving Isom hammering again at the jowl, this time with the handle of his fork, in the hope of dislodging a bit of gristle which clung to one end.
Joe’s hope leaped ahead to supper, unjustified as the flight was by the day’s developments. Human creatures could not subsist longer than a meal or two on such fare as that, he argued; there must be a change very soon, of course.
It was a heavy afternoon for Joe. He was weary from the absolute lack of nourishment when the last of the chores was done long after dusk, and Isom announced that they would go to the house for supper.
The supper began with soup, made from the left-over beans and the hog’s jaw of dinner. There it swam, that fleshless, long-toothed, salt-reddened bone, the most hateful piece of animal anatomy that Joe ever fixed his hungry eyes upon. And supper ended as it began; with soup. There was nothing else behind it, save some hard bread to soak in it, and its only savor was salt.
Isom seemed to be satisfied with, even cheered by, his liquid refreshment. His wife came to her place at the table when they were almost through, and sat stirring a bowl of the mixture of bread and thin soup, her eyes set in abstracted stare in the middle of the table, far beyond the work of her hands. She did not speak to Joe; he did not undertake any friendly approaches.
Joe never had seen Mrs. Chase before that day, neighbors 31 though they had been for months. She appeared unusually handsome to Joe, with her fair skin, and hair colored like ripe oats straw. She wore a plait of it as big as his wrist coiled and wound around her head.
For a little while after finishing his unsatisfying meal, Joe sat watching her small hand turning the spoon in her soup. He noted the thinness of her young cheeks, in which there was no marvel, seeing the fare upon which she was forced to live. She seemed to be unconscious of him and Isom. She did not raise her eyes.
Joe got up in a little while and left them, going to the porch to look for his bundle and his book. They were gone. He came back, standing hesitatingly in the door.