Will began to suffer now because Agnes treated the other fellows
too well. With a lover's exacting jealousy, he wanted her in some
way to hide their tenderness from the rest, but to show her
indifference to men like Young and Kinney. He didn't stop to
inquire of himself the justice of such a demand, nor just how it
was to be done. He only insisted she ought to do it.

He rose and left the table at the end of his dinner, without having
spoken to her, without even a tender, significant glance, and he
knew, too, that she was troubled and hurt. But he was suffering. It
seemed as if he had lost something sweet, lost it irrecoverably.

He noticed Ed Kinney and Bill Young were the last to come out,
just before the machine started up again after dinner, and he saw
them pause outside the threshold and laugh back at Agnes standing
in the doorway. Why couldn't she keep those fellows at a distance,
not go out of her way to bandy jokes with them?

Some way the elation of the morning was gone. He worked on
doggedly now, without looking up, without listening to the leaves,
without seeing the sunlighted clouds. Of course he didn't think that
she meant anything by it, but it irritated him and made him
unhappy. She gave herself too freely.

Toward the middle of the afternoon the machine stopped for a
time for some repairing; and while Will lay on his stack in the
bright yellow sunshine, shelling wheat in his hands and listening to
the wind in the oaks, he heard his name and her name mentioned
on the other side of the machine, where the measuring box stood.