"I can't tell you. He made me; he made all the people there."

Her father was standing between her and the door. He stood aside. "Go to
bed now. But be quiet. Your Aunt Nancy is there."

"Aunt Nancy?"

"Laban came, but he went back to the Cross Roads, and she's over for the
night with the baby."

"The baby? Oh, I'll be careful!" A joy came into her voice, and the
strain left it in something like a laugh.

Early in the morning she crept down the ladder from the loft; her father
had looped his cot up against the cabin wall and gone out. Nancy was
sitting up in the bed she had made for herself on the floor, coiling a
rope of her black hair into a knot at her neck. The baby lay cooing and
kicking in her lap. The morning air came in fresh and sweet at the open
door.

"Oh, Aunt Nancy, may I take her?"

"Yes; I'll get the breakfast. Your father'll be hungry; he's been up a
good while, I reckon."

"I'll make the fire first, and then I'll take the baby."

The girl uncovered the embers on the hearth and blew them into life; then
she ran out into the cornfield, and gathered her apron full of the milky
ears, and grated them for the cakes which her aunt molded to fry for