breakfast. She took the baby and washed its hands and face, talking and
laughing with it.

"You talk to it a sight more than you do to anybody else, Jane," the
mother said. "Don't put anything but its little shimmy on; it's goin' to
be another hot day."

"I believe," the girl said, "I'll get some water in the tub, and wash her
all over. There'll be time enough."

"It'd be a good thing, I reckon. But you mustn't forget your milkin'. I
dunno what _our_ cow'd do this morning if it wasn't for Joey. But
he'll milk her, him and Benny Hingston, between them, somehow. Benny
stayed with him last night."

"I did forget the milking," the girl said, putting the baby's little
chemise on. "But I'll do it now. Sissy will have to wait till after
breakfast for her washing." She got the tin bucket from where it blazed
a-tilt in the sun beside the back door of the cabin, and took her deep
bonnet from its peg. She did not ask why the boys slept alone in the
cabin, but her aunt felt that she must explain.

"Laban's got work for the whole fall at the Cross Roads. He went straight
back last night. I come here." She had got through without telling the lie
which she feared she must. "I'm goin' home after breakfast."

Jane asked nothing further, but called from the open door, "Sukey, Sukey!
Suk, Suk, Suk!" A plaintive lowing responded; then the snapping sound of a
cow's eager hoofs; the hoarse drumming of the milk in the bucket followed,
subduing itself to the soft final murmur of the strippings in the foam.