"Eleanor," Barbara said seriously, "keeps shoving Horace out of the trough. She won't let him eat."
Joe said dryly, "Eleanor has the manners of a pig, huh?"
She laughed, and Joe looked at her red-stained fingers. He knew without being told that Barbara, and probably all the rest except the babies, Alfred and Carlyle, had spent at least a part of their day gathering wild berries. Plucking and preserving wild fruit was a job the women folk and youngsters could do, and it was inevitable as summer itself. Joe fell back on a stock question,
"Where's Tad?"
"He went off in the woods by himself."
"Didn't he help you?"
"Oh yes. Mother made him."
Joe grinned inwardly. Emma seldom raised her voice to any of the youngsters and she never struck any of them. But somehow she managed prompt and unquestioning obedience to any order she issued, and that was more than Joe could do. There was about his wife a mysterious force which was always recognizable, but which Joe could not explain. It was strange, he reflected in passing, that this force did not carry over into anything outside the immediate family. It was strange that the thought of leaving the house should be so fearsome when in other respects Emma was so sure of herself. But he brushed the thought aside, as he had brushed it aside each time it came to plague him.
Joe entered the house and kissed Emma, and for the moment his weariness lifted. He wrinkled his nose.
"Something smells good!"