A pretty girl’s face, pink and delicate as a flower, was looking out of one of the house windows.  She was watching three men who were digging over in the field which bounded the yard near the road line.  She turned quietly when the woman entered.

“What are they digging for, mother?” said she.  “Did he tell you?”

“They’re diggin’ for—­a cellar for a new barn.”

“Oh, mother, he ain’t going to build another barn?”

“That’s what he says.”

A boy stood before the kitchen glass combing his hair.  He combed slowly and painstakingly, arranging his brown hair in a smooth hillock over his forehead.  He did not seem to pay any attention to the conversation.

“Sammy, did you know father was going to build a new barn?” asked the girl.

The boy combed assiduously.

“Sammy!”

He turned, and showed a face like his father’s under his smooth crest of hair.  “Yes, I s’pose I did,” he said, reluctantly.

“How long have you known it?” asked his mother.

“’Bout three months, I guess.”

“Why didn’t you tell of it?”

“Didn’t think ’twould do no good.”

“I don’t see what father wants another barn for,” said the girl, in her sweet, slow voice.  She turned again to the window, and stared out at the digging men in the field.  Her tender, sweet face was full of a gentle distress.  Her forehead was as bald and innocent as a baby’s, with the light hair strained back from it in a row of curl-papers.  She was quite large, but her soft curves did not look as if they covered muscles.

Her mother looked sternly at the boy.  “Is he goin’ to buy more cows?” said she.

The boy did not reply; he was tying his shoes.

“Sammy, I want you to tell me if he’s goin’ to buy more cows.”

“I s’pose he is.”

“How many?”

“Four, I guess.”

His mother said nothing more.  She went into the pantry, and there was a clatter of dishes.  The boy got his cap from a nail behind the door, took an old arithmetic from the shelf, and started for school.  He was lightly built, but clumsy.  He went out of the yard with a curious spring in the hips, that made his loose home-made jacket tilt up in the rear.

The girl went to the sink, and began to wash the dishes that were piled up there.  Her mother came promptly out of the pantry, and shoved her aside.  “You wipe ’em,” said she; “I’ll wash.  There’s a good many this mornin’.”

The mother plunged her hands vigorously into the water, the girl wiped the plates slowly and dreamily.  “Mother,” said she, “don’t you think it’s too bad father’s going to build that new barn, much as we need a decent house to live in?”

Her mother scrubbed a dish fiercely.  “You ain’t found out yet we’re women-folks, Nanny Penn,” said she.  “You ain’t seen enough of men-folks yet to.  One of these days you’ll find it out, an’ then you’ll know that we know only what men-folks think we do, so far as any use of it goes, an’ how we’d ought to reckon men-folks in with Providence, an’ not complain of what they do any more than we do of the weather.”