out three o'clock, Nan was in her garden, busy with
the peony bed. She was dressed in cotton crepe the color of the soil,
and her cheeks were red, like wild roses, and her ungloved hands also
the color of mould. She was delightfully happy getting into the earth
and the earth into her, and she looked it. Charlotte, coming on her
across the grass, thought her face was like a bloom the rest of her had
somehow made, as the earth was going to make red peonies. That is, I
think Charlotte thought something of this sort, though she would not
have put it in that way. Only she did have a great sense of Nan's entire
harmony with the garden bed and the garden bed with her. Charlotte had
other things on her mind, and she spoke without preamble:

"D'you know what's happened over to Tenney's?"

Nan got up from her knees, and her face was no longer the April-May face
she had bent above the peonies.

"No," she said. "What is it?"

"I see doctor go by this mornin' in his car," said Charlotte, "carryin'
Tira. In a couple of hours they come back. An' then he went by ag'in,
goin' down home. I was on the lookout an' stopped him. I was kind of
uneasy. An' he says: 'Yes, Mis' Tenney's baby's dead. She overlaid it,'
he says. 'They feel terribly about it,' he says. 'Tenney run away from
the services.'"

Nan stood staring. She was thinking not only about the baby and the
Tenneys' feeling terribly--this Charlotte saw--but something farther
behind, thinking back, and thinking keenly.

"I didn't say nothin' to nobody," Charlotte continued, "but the more I
thought on't the more stirred up I got. The baby gone, an' she there all
alone! So I run over. I knocked an' knocked, an' not a sound. Then, as I
was turnin' away, I got a glimpse inside the kitchen winder, an' if
you'll believe me there she set, hat an' all on, an' her hands full o'
daffies. You know them big double daffies always come up in their grass.
Well!"

Nan threw down her trowel.

"I'll go over," she said. "We'll both go."

"What I come for," Charlotte hesitated, as they crossed the grass, "was
whether I better say anything to anybody."

Nan knew she meant Raven.

"No," she said, "Oh, I don't know! We can't tell till we see."

Nan remembered she had not washed the earth off her hands, and yet,
though they were passing her door, she could not stop. When they came in
sight of the house, there was Tira in the doorway. She had taken off her
hat now, and there was no daffies in