"What was you and Stacy talkin' about so long over the fence?" Ma says, after a while.
"It's no concern of yours," says Pa. "But I'll tell ye, just to show ye what some women have to put up with. Keddie Bingy hit her over the head with a dish in the night. It's laid her up, and he's down to the Dew Drop Inn, filling himself full."
"She's used to it by this time, I guess," Ma says. "Just as well take it all at once as die by inches, I say."
"Trot out your pie," says Pa.
As soon as I could after we'd done the dishes, I took my book up to the room. Ma and I slept together. Pa had the bedroom off the dining-room. I had the bottom bureau drawer to myself for my clothes. I put my book in there, and I found a pencil in the machine drawer, and I put that by it. I'd wanted to make the book for a long time, to set down thoughts in, and keep track of the different things. But I didn't feel like making the book any more by the time I got it all ready. I went to laying out my underclothes in the drawer so's the lace edge would show on all of 'em that had it.
Ma come to the side door and called me.
"Cossy," she says, "is Luke comin' to-night?"
"I s'pose so," I says.
"Well, then, you go right straight over to Mis' Bingy's before he gets here," Ma says.
I went down the stairs—they had a blotched carpet that I hated because it looked like raw meat and gristle.