"Not very often, I'm afraid."
She sighed. After a pause she said:
"You were raised on a farm?"
"Yes. In Minnesota."
"Did you do work like that?" She pointed at a thrashing machine in the field.
"Yes, I plowed and sowed and reaped and mowed. I wasn't on the farm for my health."
"You're very strong, aren't you?" she asked admiringly.
"In a slab-sided kind of a way—yes."
Her eyes grew abstracted.
"I like strong men. Ollie was a little man, not any taller than I am, but when he was drunk he was what men call a—a—holy terror. He struck me with the water pitcher once—that was just before baby was born. I wish he'd killed me." She ended in a sudden reaction to hopeless bitterness. "It would have saved me all these months of life in this terrible country."