Marise went to the window and looked at the scene, penetrated by the strangeness of the difference between its outer and inner aspect:  ’Gene, his faded blue overalls tucked into his plowman’s heavy cow-hide boots, his shirt open over his great throat and chest, his long corded arms rising and falling with the steady effortless rhythm of the master woodsman.  Nelly, in one of her immaculate blue ginghams, a white apron over it, a white frilled shade-hat on her head, her smartly shod small feet, treading the ground with that inimitable light step of hers, circling slowly about, looking at ’Gene as he worked, looking up at the crown of the tree, high, so insolently high above her head, soon to be brought low by a wish from her heart, soon to be turned into money for her to spend.

“I came over to talk to ’Gene and Nelly about some business,” Marise said, over her shoulder, to Mrs. Powers, not able to take her eyes from the trio in the drama out there, “but I’d better wait till the tree is down before I speak to them.”

“’Twon’t be long now.  ’Gene’s been at it quite a while, and he’s stavin’ away like all possessed.  Seems as if, now he’s started in, he couldn’t get it over with quick enough to suit him.  He acted awful queer about it, I thought.”

She left her ironing and, looking over her shoulder at the children, came closer to where Marise stood.  Then she stepped back and shut the door to the pantry.  “Mis’ Crittenden,” she said in an anxious troubled voice, “‘Gene ain’t right these days.  He acts to me like he’s comin’ down with a sick spell, or something.  He ain’t right.  Today Nelly told me she woke up in the night last night and ’Gene wasn’t there.  She hollered to him, and he didn’t answer.  It scared her like everything, and she scrambled out of bed and lighted the lamp, and she said she ’most fainted away, when she see ’Gene, rolled up in a blanket, lying on the floor, over against the wall, his eyes wide open looking at her.  She said she let out a yell . . . it scairt the life out of her . . . and ’Gene he got right up.  She says to him, ’For the Lord’s sake, ’Gene, what ails you?’ And what do you suppose he says to her, he says, ’I didn’t know whether you wanted me there or not, Nelly.’  What do you think of that?  She says back, ‘For goodness’ sake, ’Gene Powers, where would you be nights, except in your own bed!’ He got back and for all Nelly knows slept all right the rest of the night.  She says she guesses he must have had some sort of funny dream, and not been really all waked up yet.  But it must ha’ gi’n her a turn, for all she ain’t one of the nervous kind.”

Marise turned sick with shocked pity.  The two women looked at each other, silently with shadowed eyes of foreboding.  Mrs. Powers shook her head, and turned back into the pantry, shutting the door behind her.  Marise heard her speaking to the children, in the cheerful, bantering, affectionate, grandmother tone she had always had for them.  She was brave, old Mrs. Powers, she always said she could “stand up to things.”  She was the sort of woman who can always be depended on to keep life going, no matter what happens; who never gives up, who can always go on taking care of the children.