afternoon, to find out what time the men would be in for supper;
and the sheer delight of breathing in the pungent smell of the
straw as it came flying from the funnel, looking, with the
sinking sun shining through it, like a million bees swarming from
a hive, while the red-brown grain gushed, a lush stream, into the
waiting wagon.

"It always makes me think of a ship sailing into port, Nellie,"
Rose had once exclaimed, "the crop coming in. It gives me a queer
kind of giddiness, makes me feel like laughing and crying all at
once," to which her sister-in-law had returned with more than her
usual responsiveness: "Yes, it's the most excitin' time of the
year, unless it's Christmas."

More nebulous were the memories of those early mornings when she
had paused in the midst of getting breakfast to sniff in the
clover-laden air and think how wonderful it would be if only she
needn't stay in the hot, stuffy kitchen but could be free to call
Bill and go picnicking or loaf deliciously under one of the big
elms. Most precious of all--the evenings she and her boy had sat
in the yard, with the cool south breeze blowing up from the
pasture, the cows looking on placidly, the frogs fluting
rhythmically in the pond, the birds chirping their good-night
calls, and the dip and swell of the farm land pulling at them
like a haunting tune, almost too lovely to be endured. Oh, there
had been moments all the sweeter and more poignant because they
had been so fleeting.

As she passed successfully through one whole round of planting,
harvesting and garnering of grain, she began to realize her own