The table was covered with an oil-cloth spotted with drippings from a candle. The plates and cups were thick and the spoons were of pewter. The bread was soggy and the bacon was thick and floating in grease. The men ate and the women served, as in ancient days. They gobbled their food like wolves, and when they drank their coffee, the noise they made was painful to June's ears. There were no napkins and when her father pushed his chair back, he wiped his dripping mouth with the back of his sleeve. And Loretta and the step-mother—they, too, ate with their knives and used their fingers. Poor June quivered with a vague newborn disgust. Ah, had she not changed—in ways they could not see!
June helped clear away the dishes—the old woman did not object to that—listening to the gossip of the mountains—courtships, marriages, births, deaths, the growing hostility in the feud, the random killing of this man or that—Hale's doings in Lonesome Cove.
“He's comin' over hyeh agin next Saturday,” said the old woman.
“Is he?” said Loretta in a way that made June turn sharply from her dishes toward her. She knew Hale was not coming, but she said nothing. The old woman was lighting her pipe.
“Yes—you better be over hyeh in yo' best bib and tucker.”
“Pshaw,” said Loretta, but June saw two bright spots come into her pretty cheeks, and she herself burned inwardly. The old woman was looking at her.
“'Pears like you air mighty quiet, June.”
“That's so,” said Loretta, looking at her, too.
June, still silent, turned back to her dishes. They were beginning to take notice after all, for the girl hardly knew that she had not opened her lips.
Once only Dave spoke to her, and that was when Loretta said she must go. June was out in the porch looking at the already beloved garden, and hearing his step she turned. He looked her steadily in the eyes. She saw his gaze drop to the fairy-stone at her throat, and a faint sneer appeared at his set mouth—a sneer for June's folly and what he thought was uppishness in “furriners” like Hale.