Perhaps an artist would have found more record in the brawny frame and the tanned, chronicled face of the woman, as she bent over her work in her gray dress in the fresh morning light. Forty years of hard, healthy labor,—you could read that in the knotted muscles and burnt skin: and no lack of strength in the face, with its high Indian cheek-bones and firm-set jaws. But there was a curious flickering shadow of grace and beauty over all this coarse hardness. The eyes were large, like the cow's under yonder tree, slow-moving, absorbing, a soft brown in color, and unreasoning; if pain came to this woman, she would not struggle, nor try to understand it: bear it dumbly, that was all. The nervous lips were not heavy, but delicately, even archly cut, with dimples waiting the slightest moving of the mouth; you would be sure that naturally the laughter and fun and cheery warmth of the world lay as close to her as to a child. But something—some loss or uncertainty in her life—had given to her smile a quick, pitiful meaning, like that of a mother watching her baby at her breast.
Andy climbed into the wagon, and cracked his whip impatiently.
"Time!" he shouted.
Neighbor Wart scuffed down the path, wiping her mouth.
"I'm glad I dropped in to breakfast, an' for company to friend Andrew here. Does thee frequent the prize-fighters' ring, that thee's got their slang so pat, lad?" as she scrambled in behind him. "Don't jerk at thy gallowses so fiercely. It's only my way. 'Sarah has a playful way with her': my father used to say that, an' it's kept by me. I don't feel a day older than when—Andrew!" sharply, "did thee bring thy lunch, to eat at my stall? The coffee'll be strong as lye this morning."
The Quaker, Jane, had a small white basket in her hand, into which she was looking.
"It's here," she said, putting it by the young man's feet. "There's ham an' bread an' pie,—plum,—enough for two. Thee'll not want to eat alone?" anxiously.
"I never do," he said, gruffly. "The old buster's savage on pie,—gettin' fat on it, I tell you, Jane, though his jaws are like nut-crackers yet."
Andy had dropped into one of the few ruts of talk in which his brain could jog easily along; he began, as usual, to rub the knees of his trousers smooth, and to turn the quid of tobacco in his mouth.
Jane, oddly enough, did not remind him that it was time to go, but stood, not heeding him, leaning on the wheel, drawing a buckle in the harness tighter.