As he sat down at the table, the miller nodded carelessly to his brothers, who, having finished their bacon and cornbread, were waiting patiently until the buckwheat cakes should be ready.  The coloured servant was never allowed to cook because, as Sarah said, “she could not abide niggers’ ways,” and Blossom, standing before the stove, with her apron held up to shield her face, was turning the deliciously browning cakes with a tin cake lifter.

“Ain’t they done yet, daughter?” asked Abner in his amiable drawling voice.  He was a silent, brooding man, heavily built, with a coarse reddish beard, stained with tobacco juice, which hung over his chest.  Since the death of his wife, Blossom’s mother, some fifteen years before, he had become more gloomy, more silent, more obstinately unapproachable.  He was one who appeared to dwell always in the shadow of a great grief, and this made him generally respected by his neighbours though he was seldom sought.  People said of him that he was “a solid man and trustworthy,” but they kept out of his way unless there was road mending or a sale of timber to be arranged.

Blossom tossed the buckwheat cakes into a plate and brought them to her father, who helped himself with his knife.  When she passed them to Abel, who was feeding his favorite hound puppy, Moses, with bacon, he shook his head and drew back.

“Give them to mother, Blossom, she never eats a bite of breakfast,” he said.  He was the only one of Sarah’s sons who ever considered her, but she was apt to regard this as a sign of weakness and to resent it with contumely.

“I ain’t hungry,” she replied grimly, “an’ I reckon I’d rather you’d say less about my comfort, Abel, and do mo’.  Buckwheat cakes don’t come well from a son that flies into his mother’s face on the matter of eternal damnation.”

Without replying, Abel helped himself to the cakes she had refused and reached for the jug of molasses.  Sarah was in one of her nagging moods, he knew, and she disturbed him but little.  The delight and the desire of first love was upon him, and he was thinking rapturously of the big pine that would go to the building of Molly’s house.

Grandmother, who wanted syrup, began to cry softly because she must eat her tasteless mush.  “He’s got the stomach to stand it,” she repeated bitterly, while her tears fell into her bowl.

“What is it, granny?  Will you try a bite of buckwheat?” inquired Sarah solicitously.  She had never failed in her duty to her husband’s parents, and this virtue also, she was inclined to use as a weapon of offense to her children.

“Give it to him—­he’s got teeth left to chaw on,” whimpered grandmother, and her old chest heaved with bitterness because grandfather, who was three years the elder, still retained two jaw teeth on one side of his mouth.

A yellow-and-white cat, after vainly purring against grandmother’s stool, had jumped on the window-sill in pursuit of a belated wasp, and Sarah, rushing to the rescue of her flowers, cuffed the animal soundly and placed her in grandfather’s lap.  He was a lover of cats—­a harmless fancy which was a source of unceasing annoyance to his wife.