any left," she replied, as she turned again to her shelling.

Anna's round, brown finger moved in circles through the peas. "I'm too
young to marry," she said, at last.

"No younger than what I was."

But it seemed to Anna as though life had changed since those days. For
every one was reaching for more. And Anna, too, wanted more . . . more
than her mother had had. "If I wait," she said in a low voice,
"to . . . see a bit of life . . . what's the harm?"

The pod in Mrs. Barly's hand cracked with a pop, and trembled in the
air, split open like the covers of a book. "I declare," she exclaimed,
"I don't know what to think . . . well . . . wait . . . I suppose you
want to be like Mrs. Wicket?"

"No, I don't," said Anna.

"Yes," said Mrs. Barly, in a shaking voice, "yes . . . wait . . .
you'll see a bit of something . . . a taste of the broom,
perhaps. . . ."

While the two women looked after the house, the hired men worked in the
fields, under the hot sun, their wet, cotton shirts open at the neck,
their faces shaded with wide straw hats. Farmer Barly leaned against
one side of a tumbled-down wooden fence, and old Mr. Crabbe against the
other.

"This year," said Farmer Barly, "I'm going to put up a silo in my barn.