Look out there! (He points out of the window at the drifted snow) It’s like that half the year, froze up, everything, most of all the people. Just a family by itself, maybe. Just a few folks, good an’ bad, month after month, with nothin’ to think about but just the mean little things, that really don’t amount to nothin’, but get to be bigger than all the world outside.
JANE (sewing)
Somebody must do the farming, Ben.
BEN
Somebody like the Jordans, that’s been doin’ it generation after generation. Well, look at us. I heard a feller, in a Y.M.C.A. hut, tellin’ how nature brought animals into the world, able to face what they had to face——
JANE
Yes, Ben?
BEN
That’s what nature’s done for us Jordans,—brought us into the world half froze before we was born. Brought us into the world mean, and hard, so’s we could live the hard, mean life we have to live.
JANE