The two women sat down together, a wooden bowl between them. The pods
split under their fingers, click, cluck; the peas fell into the bowl
like shot at first, dull as the bowl grew full. Click, cluck, click,
cluck . . . Anna began to dream again. "Oh, do wake up," said her
mother; "one would think . . ."

Anna's hands went startled into the peas. "I must be in love," she
said with half a smile.

Mrs. Barly sighed. "Ak," she said.

Anna began to laugh. After a while she asked, "Do you think I'm in
love?"

"Like as not," said her mother.

"Well, then," Anna cried, "I'm not in love at all--not now."

Mrs. Barly let her fingers rest idly along the rim of the bowl. "When
I was a girl . . ." she began. Then it was Anna's turn to sigh.

"It seems like yesterday," remarked Mrs. Barly, who wanted to say, "I
am still a young woman."

Anna split pods gravely, her eyes bent on her task. The tone of her
mother's voice, tart and dry, filled her mind with the sulky thoughts
of youth. "There's fewer alive to-day," she said, "than when you were
a girl."

Mrs. Barly knew very well what her daughter meant. "Be glad there's