.

The evening passed in grim silence, and in sleep he saw that sign
wriggling across the side of the barn like boa-constrictors hung on
rails. He tried to paint them out, but every time he tried it the man
seemed to come back with a sheriff, and savagely warned him to let it
stay till the year was up. In some mysterious way the agent seemed to
know every time he brought out the paint-pot, and he was no longer the
pleasant-voiced individual who drove the calico ponies.

As he stepped out into the yard next morning, that abominable,
sickening, scrawling advertisement was the first thing that claimed his
glance--it blotted out the beauty of the morning.

Mrs. Ripley came to the window, buttoning her dress at the throat, a
whisp of her hair sticking assertively from the little knob at the back
of her head.

"Lovely, ain't it! An' _I_'ve got to see it all day long. I can't look
out the winder but that thing's right in my face." It seemed to make her
savage. She hadn't been in such a temper since her visit to New York. "I
hope you feel satisfied with it."

Ripley walked off to the barn. His pride in its clean, sweet newness was
gone. 'He slyly tried the paint to see if it couldn't be scraped off,
but it was dried in thoroughly. Whereas before he had taken delight in
having his neighbors turn and look at the building, now he kept out of
sight whenever he saw a team coming. He hoed corn away in the back of
the field, when he should have been bugging potatoes by the roadside.

Mrs. Ripley was in a frightful mood about it, but she held herself in
check for several days. At last she burst forth:

"Ethan Ripley, I can't stand that thing any longer, and I ain't goin'
to, that's all! You've got to go and paint that thing out, or I will.
I'm just about crazy with it."

"But, mother, I promised "----

"I don't care _what_ you promised, it's got to be painted out. I've got
the nightmare now, seem' it. I'm goin' to send f'r a pail o' red paint,
and I'm goin' to paint that out if it takes the last breath I've got to
do it."

"I'll tend to it, mother, if you won't hurry me"----

"I can't stand it another day. It makes me boil every time I look out
the winder."

Uncle Ethan hitched up his team and drove gloomily off to town, where he
tried to find the agent. He lived in some other part of the county,
however, and so the old man gave up and bought a pot of red paint, not
daring to go back to his desperate wife without it.