"Sarah's a bit like Mrs. Dewey," thought the man. "Quiet, and good and sort of sweet. But me, I'm like the Admiral."
The dinner bell cut across his thoughts with its distant hollow clangor, now full and near as the breeze brought it directly to his ears, now remote and thin as the wind veered. The horses pricked up their ears and stamped impatiently, Stud, whistling loudly and merrily, unsnapped the tugs and clucked. Released from their dragging burden the team trotted over the soft earth at such a pace that Stud Brailsford had to break into a run; and the three of them, the two beasts and the man, came into the barnyard in a whirl of leaping, screeching chickens, hissing ganders, and the hearty hallo of Early Ann.
3
On the broad kitchen stoop Brailsford scraped the black dirt from his shoes, then, whistling, went in to wash. Sarah hurried to prime the cistern pump which wheezed and creaked as it gushed forth a clear stream of clean-smelling rain water. He scrubbed face and hands with a coarse yellow soap, dried himself vigorously on the crash roller-towel, ran the family comb through his curls, and hesitated for a second to look at himself in the uneven glass of the old walnut-framed mirror.
What he saw evidently pleased him: clear blue eyes which could laugh or be very angry, wrinkles at the outer corners more from smiling than from squinting into the sun, a two-days' growth of heavy black stubble over cheeks both ruddy and tan, a good, straight English nose which went oddly but well with the slightly spoiled, pouting mouth; good teeth, a high forehead which bulged at the temples, but was in no way out of proportion to the leonine head with its mass of graying curls. He pulled at his jowls tentatively. No use shaving until Sunday morning.
"Thought you rang the dinner bell, Sarah," he said smilingly as the hot, somewhat harassed woman shuttled back and forth from the roaring cook stove to the kitchen table. "Guess we'll have time for a tune."
He crossed the wide, low-ceilinged room to the graphophone on the big desk under the north window, pushed aside mail-order catalogues, the ten-pound family Bible and back numbers of farm magazines, gave the little crank a dozen turns, and from a homemade box studded with big wooden pegs drew a heavy cylinder record.
"Edison record," the huge tin horn painted like a tiger lily bragged in a cracked barytone. "For I Picked a Lemon in the Garden of Love Where They Say Only Peaches Grow...."
"You play that just to tease me," the woman said. She spoke softly and indulgently as a mother might speak to a mischievous child.
Early Ann came in with an armload of smoothly split oak and hickory which she dumped into the wood box. Her strong round arms looked very capable for the task and there was something delightful about the disarray of her blond curls and the little beads of perspiration on her forehead. Her movements were effortless and unstudied.